New Italian deli and market coming to west Lawrence; informal survey finds neighbors dislike proposed Kasold changes

photo by: Nick Krug

An aerial view shows Kasold Drive looking northwest as it elbows near the intersection Harvard Road.

For some of us, our experience with Italian food doesn’t go much beyond spaghetti, all-you-can-eat breadsticks and a carb-induced nap that usually ends with the waiter waking you up to tell you more breadsticks have arrived. But that’s not the only type of Italian food that is popular. Lawrence is going to get a taste of an Italian deli with the opening of a new west Lawrence business.

Work is underway to convert the Miller Mart gasoline station and convenience store into Miceli Market and Deli. Jess Maceli, who co-owns the business with his wife, Renee, said he hopes to have the renovations completed by mid-October. The business is at 3300 W. Sixth St., but you may know it best as the gas station with a small kitchen that has spawned a number of successful restaurants. Restaurants such as Biemer’s BBQ, Tortas Jalisco and The Basil Leaf Cafe all got their start there.

Maceli, though, is doing this venture a little differently. He’s not renting space in the Miller Mart, but rather he’s purchased the entire building and convenience store business. He’s going to maintain the fuel service and the convenience store aspects of the business, but he’s going to add Italian meats, cheeses and other specialty Italian food products to the business. He’s going to rename the entire business Miceli Market and Deli.

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Maceli has wanted to own an Italian market ever since growing up in the southeast Kansas town of Frontenac, which has a strong Italian-American heritage. It also has longtime business Pallucca’s Meat & Deli, where Maceli spent a lot of time as a kid.

“We’ve been wanting to do something like this for 10 or 12 years,” Maceli said. “We want a location where you can get a good quality lunch meat and a good quality sandwich. We’re going to try to be more unique than what you can find elsewhere.”

As for the food the store will offer, Maceli said the store has a deal to become a retailer of Volpi brand Italian meats, which is a longtime St. Louis-based company that bills itself as America’s oldest manufacturer of hand-crafted Italian meat products. That means salami will be a big part of the store’s deli case, with multiple varieties featured. Also look for prosciutto, an Italian-style dry-cured ham; for capocollo, a salted cold cut that is often seasoned with wine, garlic, and a variety of herbs and spices that vary depending on the region it comes from; and mortadella, which is kind of an Italian version of bologna. (Italians everywhere are swerving their Ferraris and screaming that bologna is an American version of mortadella.) An Italian sausage also will be among the meat offerings, Maceli said.

Italian cheese also will be stocked in the deli cases, so I’m assuming that means everything from provolone to gorgonzola to parmigiano-reggiano. Both the meats and cheeses will be sold by the pound.

The deli also will offer made-to-order sandwiches and panini’s, plus Maceli said there will be some pasta specials on a regular basis. He said his family has a rigatoni and meatball recipe that will be a staple of the menu. Also look for pasta salads and garden salads available to take out. Eventually, he said some dessert offerings will be added to the deli case, including homemade cannoli.

The deli also may offer up some good tales from time to time, including why the “Miceli” in the business’ name is spelled differently from the “Maceli” in Jess’ name. Jess said that goes back to his grandfather being a bootlegger during Prohibition times, and let’s just say after dealing with certain authorities, Grandpa thought it would be best to change the spelling of the family’s name a bit. The different spelling also may help eliminate some confusion in the Lawrence market. Downtown Lawrence is home to the longtime catering company Maceli’s. The catering company and the deli, however, aren’t owned by the same people and aren’t connected.

During the renovation of the deli space, the gas station and convenience store remain open. Maceli is operating that side of the business as well, and said a lot of work has gone into cleaning the facility, repainting, remodeling the bathrooms and just generally giving the location a new look.

“When we are done, the left-hand side will be the convenience store, and the right-hand side will be the market and deli,” Maceli said.

In other news and notes from around town:

• You’ll have to figure out how an Italian deli will fit into your diet. Meanwhile, residents along Kasold Drive are trying to figure out how a “road diet” will fit into their daily routines. As we have reported many times, city engineers are recommending a “road diet” for the portion of Kasold Drive between Eighth and 14th streets, which means engineers are recommending the number of lanes be reduced from two in each direction to one lane in each direction, plus a center turn lane. The idea, in part, is that the narrower road will be more friendly for pedestrians and bicyclists.

The idea hasn’t been universally loved, though. Well, City Commissioner Matthew Herbert has decided to try to get a better idea of what residents near the section of street think of the idea of a lane reductions. Herbert said on his commissioner Facebook page that he and his family started walking in the neighborhood surrounding Kasold and conducted a brief survey with residents.

As of Monday afternoon, Herbert said he had received 27 responses from residents who were against the lane-reduction proposal and only three who were in favor of it. Granted, I don’t think the survey is scientific, but it is a pretty straightforward exercise to check in with people who live near the road. I haven’t had a chance to talk with Herbert about his findings yet, but on his Facebook page he expressed surprise at how lopsided the results are.

“I figured the neighborhood was opposed,” Herbert wrote. “I suppose I just didn’t realize they were nearly unanimously opposed.”

Herbert also sought to assure residents that no decision has been made on whether the Kasold lane reductions should move forward.

“City engineers may have decided what they will present as our best option, but without commission approval, they cannot go forth,” Herbert wrote.

For what it is worth, it is unclear to me when the Kasold project will come back up for discussion. It was scheduled to be voted on just prior to Jeremy Farmer’s surprise resignation from the City Commission. The fallout from that resignation, though, caused the city to pull the item from consideration because there were more pressing items for the commission to talk about at that meeting. But the item hasn’t shown back up on an agenda since then. The item does show up on the list of “future agenda items” that the commission keeps. But the Kasold project doesn’t have a date assigned to it.