Mediterranean Deli’s pita bread machine was up and running again Tuesday morning, filling the West Franklin Street space with the smell of cooked dough instead of construction materials. On the other side of the kitchen’s the swinging doors, dozens of employees quickly moved around the counters preparing catering orders and training newcomers.
Owner Jamil Kadoura said it was just the second day staff were producing their beloved Mediterranean meals in the new space – despite it being the same home where the restaurant has operated for most of its three decades in Chapel Hill.
“When I walk here now, I feel, ‘Oh, it’s like the old place,’” he told Chapelboro. “Even though it looks a little better and nicer, in my opinion, it’s a new place. But I’ve started feeling more comfortable. Like, when I saw the gluten-free pita bread [being made in the basement] …I hadn’t seen it for two years. That was like a party here! It was like, ‘Oh my God, this is it, it’s back…now we’re doing the pita here.’”
Mediterranean Deli Owner Jamil Kadoura stands inside the deli and bakery by the pita bread machine in the front on Tuesday, Sep. 3, 2025. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
Two years and two months after a fire destroyed the interior of Med Deli, the business is preparing to welcome back customers to in-person dining next week. Despite a litany of delays and missed target dates, the 410 West Franklin Street business will reopen for dinner hours starting on Tuesday, Sep. 9.
Since that roof fire broke out on July 22, 2023, and burned through much of the building, Kadoura and his team shifted to find other ways to continue working and serving customers. It started with catering and gradually worked up to fulfilling takeout orders – which Kadoura said was a difficult task while figuring out a path forward. Ultimately, he said the outpouring of community support and dedication of his employees spurred him to invest in rebuilding the space.
The dining room, deli counters and market space will look familiar to customers, with Kadoura saying the old setup worked very well for both patrons and staff. But it’s the back-of-the-house areas where the biggest changes have been made since 2023. A new kitchen setup with a central island hood vent and cooking stations, three additional walk-in fridges and freezers, and significantly more storage space allows for Med Deli to operate both more efficiently and potentially on a bigger scale.
“We invested lots of money in this [space] besides what the insurance gave us,” Kadoura said. “What the insurance gave us was really like a drop in the ocean for this, so we invested a lot of money to make it the way we wanted to. Everything that we wish to have, we have now.
“I love to say that statement,” Med Deli’s owner added with a gleeful laugh.
The dining room of Mediterranean Deli awaits its first customers since the rebuild and renovation. The deli counters, bakery section and marketplace of multicultural foods remain in the same layout as before the 2023 fire. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
Areas like the basement of 410 West Franklin Street, shown here, are where renovation beyond fire damage was completed. Kadoura said a former crawl space that stretches out underground was upfitted and expanded to provide significantly more storage space for the deli. (Photo by Brighton McConnell/Chapel Hill Media Group.)
All in all, the fire insurance covered roughly $1.6 million of the sustained damage, according to Kadoura, with the total rebuild requiring around $3.5 million and equipment replacements costing $1 million. Part of the reason he felt confident in taking the plunge was the community’s generosity in the immediate aftermath of the fire – as a GoFundMe campaign to help cover Mediterranean Deli employees’ wages raised more than $213,000.
To this day, Kadoura said he is still shocked by that fundraising, which was organized by someone not affiliated with the deli.
“We had students that actually donated $5 to the GoFundMe,” he recalled. “What does that tell you? It tells you, ‘I want to give you something, I’m sorry I can’t afford to give more than this…but I want to give you this.’ To me, it was mind-blowing what the community did.”
Having that money to help his employees – who Kadoura credits for inspiring him to push forward – kept 38 of them around for the catering and takeout business. He would pay each for part-time work, with the donations covering the gap between their typical hours. Kadoura said those workers are all coming back to the 410 West Franklin Street location, along with a dozen more who dropped their other jobs when he asked if they wanted to return for Med Deli’s reopening. While there are still positions being trained, the owner pointed to that retention reflecting how special his business’ culture is.
Bringing in the new staff and redesigning its kitchen layout are not the only changes since Mediterranean Deli was fully functional. Since the fire, the business has opened several new locations – one in the Beech Cafe near UNC Hospital, another in Elon and one in Raleigh – and Kadoura has ramped up his event-planning business, The Story, which plans to open a ‘second chapter’ also on West Franklin Street.
With everyone readjusting to full-scale operations at the main location, Kadoura said Med Deli will initially only be open for evenings (4 p.m. to 9 p.m.) instead of its typical hours with lunches. Based on the widespread support, he expects it will be a busy week and asked patrons to be understanding to the deli’s return to form. When envisioning the achievement of reopening next Tuesday, Kadoura described feeling a “happy nervousness” that sits like “watermelons” in his stomach.
“I want to make sure I do what I used to do,” he said. “I want to make sure I meet people’s expectations. [There’s] so much going on now that I’m getting pulled in every direction. I don’t know… I think once the door opens, I think all of this [anxiety] will go away.”
Before that, though, Mediterranean Deli will host a private event for Chapel Hill firefighters and first responders who arrived to battle the blaze that ruined the prior iteration of the business — another way Kadoura plans to say ‘thank you’ to all those who have helped the deli’s comeback.
Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the 2023 fire was electrical in nature. It has since been updated.
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