Jewish foodies rejoice – Portland once again has Jewish deli fare.

Bubbie’s Deli, a pop-up within Mother’s Bistro downtown, has rolled out a menu of deli favorites to fill the void that owner Lisa Schroeder saw and felt compelled to address.

I, too, have felt the lack,” Schroeder said of the absence of Jewish deli food in the wake of closures at longtime staples such as Kenny and Zuke’s and Kornblatt’s. “Ideally, I didn’t want to be a deli. I didn’t want to create another restaurant and for a while, I’ve been anguishing over, ‘How can I fill this need?’”

Some of what was needed was already on hand – corned beef and matzo ball soup are stalwarts of Mother’s menu. Others are new additions, like the house-smoked pastrami.

“Our sous chef Rick [Widmayer] was the chef at Screen Door when it first opened, and he used to work at Podnahs Barbecue, so he loves smoking meat,” Schroeder explained. “This is his passion and we happen to have had a smoker here at Mother’s.”

Rubbed with coriander and peppercorns, smoked and then steamed, the pastrami is available by weight (call ahead) or served up on another house-made labor of love in the form of Schroeder’s rye bread.

“I could not get the kind of rye bread I know from the East Coast, which is not hard and crunchy that takes off the roof of your mouth,  and it’s not super sour. So we just formulated our own recipe,” she explained. “It is soft and chewy. It has caraway flavor because we infuse the water we use with caraway seeds, but then I throw away the seeds because I don’t want to get hard seeds all over the place.”

There’s also whitefish salad, pierogies and rugelach for dessert. Schroeder will add more to the menu in accordance with demand – which, so far, has been robust.

“It has been phenomenal. It has been beyond my wildest dreams. Apparently not just Jews like pastrami! Schroeder said. “I was worried that there weren’t enough people in Portland who may want this and I was wrong.”

The name (Yiddish for “grandmother”) is a natural extension of the restaurant Schroeder’s deli pop-up is housed within.

“If you’re going to have Mother’s, the grandmother would be bubbie,” she said. “I used to have a little deli called Balabusta, (a Yiddish term a skilled homemaker) but a lot of people don’t know what a balabusta is, so we just went with something that most people understand.”

People also understand delicious.

Bubbie’s Deli Board is available at Mother’s Wednesday through Friday, 9 am-2 pm. For more information, visit mothersbistro.com.