Owner of Delight On Broadway restores historic building for bagel shop in Salem
Delight on Broadway is coming soon to downtown Salem.
Greg Farmer and his wife have spent the last year saving a historic building in preparation for opening an eatery at 119 South Broadway Ave.
“My formative years were in restaurants in a lot of different capacities,” Farmer said. “This has been something that has always been in my blood, something I’ve always wanted to do. We like the direction that Salem’s moving and wanted to be part of it. We asked ourselves, ‘How can we leave our mark?’ I always wanted to do the restaurant thing; my wife is very business savvy. So we started looking around for places in Salem for sale, and this place had just been listed. It was falling apart, but we fell in love with it.”
According to Farmer, Delight on Broadway is partnering with a Bronx-based company to source authentic New York bagels.
“I was lucky enough to get in touch with a guy who sells these bagels who wants to sell them all over at restaurants. They’re actually made in the Bronx, New York. Once you taste them, you’ll say, ‘This is why they buy them as opposed to making them,’” Farmer said. “It’s a different standard.”
Farmer said he’s been curating the different flavored cream cheeses to perfectly accompany the bagels, which will also be available as breakfast sandwiches.
“We have Oreo, birthday cake and we’re experimenting with a honey walnut. We’re experimenting with a brown sugar and honey for the sweeter ones,” he said. “We have a spinach dip and Santa Fe for savory ones. We’re really taking our time and using good ingredients.”
Over the past year, Farmer has been working with Stitle Construction Company on extensive renovations and a roof refurbishment at the property.
“Everybody in town knows that the back wall of this building was leaning,” Farmer said. “Then we found out it’s because the roof is sort of sinking. In my opinion, there was only one guy to call, and that was Jerry Stitle. He teamed up with a really intelligent architect from Cleveland, and they said it needs replaced and repaired. In a nutshell, they pretty much took the roof off and slowly rebuilt it all like right as they were removing it.
The entire roof of the building constructed in 1904 has been completely rebuilt, and the back wall that was leaned had to be redone as well.
“We’re very happy to say we saved the building. We love the historical area of it downtown,” Farmer said.
Preparations are on track for a grand opening around the end of May. Once the last details are finalized, Delight on Broadway will be open from 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. at 119 South Broadway Ave. in Salem.
“I’m so excited to be in the mix with Kravitz and The OG Ltd, and the long-standing places like Ezio’s and Ricky’s,” Farmer said. “There’s so much drawing people downtown. Nobody eats lunch at the same place every day now; there’s so much more down here that people are going to say, ‘Hey, let’s just go downtown. You get what you want. I’ll get what I want.’ It’s so cute down here and it’s such a cool place to a cool place to hang out. I’m really enjoying it down here.”
