“For the past 25-30 years I thought my grandmother was a bread grifter,” explains Rob Clement, the chef and owner of Meshugganah, a Jewish deli and bakery pop-up in Charlotte. Dorothy, who went by Ma in the family, would open her purse at the now-shuttered Miami deli Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House and stuff into it “every last [rye-onion] roll...in what, to a young kid, seemed like a very sketchy manner,” Rob adds.

The next day, Rob would watch from his perch in Ma’s 1970s yellow bucket chair as she made chopped liver, cooking onions in schmaltz from a small tub she kept in the freezer, broiling livers, and then grinding them by hand with hard boiled eggs, fresh herbs, and celery. She would also make tuna fish salad packed with grated onion and a chopped pickle — sometimes as a tuna melt. On the table, there were always the rolls from The Rascal House. “We’d sit... and we’d eat and do what grandmothers and their grandsons do and talk,” says Rob. The lunches were their private tradition, never shared with siblings or Rob’s parents. 

When Ma passed away about 10 years ago, the chopped liver recipe, which she learned from her mother Rebecca, was lost. Ma never wrote it down or taught anyone else to make it, but her technique left an impression.

While working in a restaurant early in his career, Rob was tasked with making chicken liver mousse. Like his grandmother, who was raised in a kosher home, he broiled the livers until there was no blood remaining — an approach essential for kashrut, but quite different from French technique where livers are left pink in the center. His chef was less than impressed. 

This spring, he organized a take-home Passover pop-up and set out to make chopped liver as he had many times before — always comparing it to Ma’s and coming up short. This time was different though, he purchased a meat grinder. “As soon as I put livers in the meat grinder I had the most vivid case of deja vu. I could see my grandmother’s kitchen,” he recalls. “And then I tasted this and I was like “Oh my God, this is what it was supposed to be.’”

When Rob opens Meshugganah as a brick and mortar deli and bakery next year, Ma’s chopped liver will be on the menu as will her tuna fish salad. As for those rye-onion rolls, his family is working to help him track down the recipe. And he recently learned that Ma wasn’t a bread thief afterall. At an event where he shared his love of The Rascal Hose, an elderly gentleman came up to him and said that the best part of eating there was the chance to take the bread home.