By Sarah Golibart Gorman, contributor
Foodie Q&A is a series showcasing the Harrisonburg food community. Food enthusiast and storyteller Sarah Golibart Gorman interviews food and drink makers behind the Friendly City food scene. You’ll read about their origins, creative processes, aspirations, and go-to spots in town. This is the thirteenth and final article in the series!
This month, Gorman sat down with Lauren Penrod and Logan Strawderman to discuss the legacy of Lola’s Delicatessen, which closed its doors on May 31, what they miss the most, and what they’re looking forward to in this new chapter. Spoiler alert! Cookbook coming soon!
Gorman: Can you tell me where you grew up and about the food you grew up eating?
Strawderman: I grew up in Northern Virginia, in Manassas. My folks were public servants, a firefighter and animal control officer. I suppose we ate simply and quickly because my folks worked long hours. But that’s how I got into food, helping my mom with Hamburger Helper, spaghetti, stuff like that.
Penrod: I was born in New Jersey and then I grew up in Connecticut. Both of those locations were suburbs of Manhattan because my dad worked in midtown Manhattan. It was cool because we were really close to the city and could eat tons of good food and stuff like that, but we were also broke because we were living in the suburbs of Manhattan, and so we couldn’t go out so much. Mostly what I ate growing up was weird food, cottage cheese, a lot of raw vegetables, chicken that was cooked to the point of almost not being chewable. It was jerky-esque. Bran and bananas was a treat. I didn’t know it wasn’t normal until I was a teenager.
Gorman: When did you begin cooking and who taught you?
Strawderman: I was in the Boy Scouts and took on a lot of cooking as a responsibility to my peers, cooking in the woods. My first restaurant gig was North River Grill in Bridgewater in 2007. I graduated from Bridgewater College and moved to Bridgewater. The restaurant was right next to my apartment. I was getting hammered at the bar and a guy asked me if I’d tried the food yet. I hadn’t, but he told me that the ribs were pretty good. And I was like “Man, I can make better ribs than you.” We went back and forth for a half and hour, talking about food, and he told me to come in for an interview the next day. I started working there and learned a bunch. I was in a southern rock band, and thought I’d be a rock star maybe. And kitchen gigs were always open to having time off for shows and touring and stuff. So I landed there, and then just kept going.
Penrod: My first restaurant job was also my first real job, which was Baskin Robbins with a little deli inside it. It was awesome, because free ice cream, free sandwiches. What more does a teenager want? But I didn’t learn how to cook until I was working at Finnegans. I was working as a server and needed more hours, and there weren’t any more server hours. And so they were able to squeeze me in the kitchen some nights, but I didn’t know how to cook anything. Luckily, the owner trusted me, and there was another guy with me that was really good about teaching me about sauces and cooking meat on the grill, like. I remember having chicken that was cooked correctly and being like, “Wow, that’s amazing.”
Gorman: What brought you to Harrisonburg and what’s kept you here?
Strawderman: Bridgewater College. My wife was three years behind me, so I moved to Bridgwater to be with her until she graduated and then we just stuck around. At one point, we contemplated a move to Chicago, but that didn’t work out so we landed a lot of roots here.
Penrod: JMU brought me here. By the time I started college, we had relocated to Northern Virginia, which is just a hellhole, and so when I came to JMU in ‘98 I was stoked on the fact that there’s a bunch of like nature stuff to do. The downtown is so community-driven and it feels like you’re in your own little neighborhood.
Gorman: What places did you work before opening Lola’s? What lessons did you learn there that help you in your current position?
Strawderman: Bridgewater Retirement Community was the biggest one. I worked there for seven years before I started my foodtruck, Rocktown Slops. We cooked a wide variety of foods at the Retirement Community, something different every day. Lots of soups. Every day, 12 gallons of soup, two different soups a day. It was consistent. I learned a lot about portion control and recipe compliance and how to be more efficient with building and executing a menu.
Penrod: I opened Midtowne Market in 2010. It had already been a convenience store for three years before, and the owners wanted to sell it as a turnkey business and I wanted to get out of bartending. So it was perfect. I worked at the Blue Nile and Finnegan’s before Midtowne, but Finnegan’s was my biggest learning experience prior to Midtowne. I was there for five years and Donna, the owner, was really good about letting me get my hands and feet and everything else dirty, learning about how she ran the business and all the bookkeeping and all of that stuff. So that’s where I learned about employee management, restaurant management, bar management, a lot of management, some bookkeeping, and a lot about budgeting, which was very important. I’m very grateful to her for that.
But Midtowne is where I learned the most, because by the time we opened the deli, I had been there the longest. Midtowne taught me how to run a business from A to Z, like, fully fleshed out, versus bits and pieces.
Gorman: When did you decide you wanted to open a deli together?
Strawderman: I think we both had concepts in our brains, and I was wondering what I would do next after the food truck. A deli was needed here, so I threw my passion behind it. I started exploring working on recipes and and finding what I wanted it to be, which was different from what Lauren was conceptualizing. Somehow, my idea got back to Lauren and we met up and found that our concepts were far enough apart that we could potentially coexist in Harrisonburg at some point.
Penrod: I wanted to put a deli into Midtowne, but that ended up not being possible because of the size of the space and plumbing and all that. The main impetus for that was that I really wanted to eat at a deli. I worked with a couple different combinations of people from 2014 on. It was such a long-term project and a lot of people weren’t interested in doing something that far out. One of our original partners, Molly, and I were looking for the food guy. That’s how we learned about Logan’s idea. I knew him from shows, he seemed like a nice guy. I thought we should just talk to him and make sure our business ideas were different enough. But Logan was also planning further out, so timelines matched up. Instantly, I knew it was going to be good.
Gorman: Can you share about your creative process when you’re developing menus and recipes?
Penrod: Logan is like a food genius. I think it’s like he creeps into the minds of people and the general public, and pulls out what they want, even if they don’t know that they want it.
Strawderman: When I started going down the rabbit hole of the deli passion project, I started experimenting with curing my own meats. I was really inspired by Edelweiss, a European-style deli with meat production in Portland, Oregon. So I started making my own corned beef and pastrami. I also had visions of deboning chicken for slicing and turkey and making salami and mortadella. Thank goodness we didn’t have the space for it.
Our specials would develop as ideas over months. We’d have lots of conversations on the line about flavors and combinations. One of my favorites was the Kansas City Reuben, which is just like a barbecue Reuben, but Bill Howard had it on tour with the Judy Chops. I was like, well, let’s do that. Customers would make suggestions and I’d fixate on it until I figured it out. Our customers trusted us so much, so we could go in a lot of different directions with specials.
That’s what I’m missing. The creative outlet. The ideas are still flowing, but I don’t have an outlet for them.
Gorman: What about your signature sandwiches, the Lo and La? Where did those come from?
Penrod: There used to be a sandwich shop called Spankies and I loved going down there and getting the Betty Boop with no bacon. The Betty Boop was smoked turkey, muenster cheese, mayo, and bacon on seeded rye. I stupidly didn’t want to just straight copy it, so I decided to do it as a cold sandwich with lettuce and onion. I should have just stuck to the Spankie’s original.
Strawderman: I think I created a bunch of sandwiches, and then we had to name them. I had come up with this London Broil sandwich already, just a perfect sandwich. And I didn’t have a name for it, so that just landed as the Lo. Our Italian sandwich, Strawdermanwich, which is just my last name with -wich slapped on.
Gorman: When did you realize you were ready to close the deli?
Strawderman: To be a little corny, your favorite TV show doesn’t last forever. And we were like this series that was ready to end. Boboko is similar, they were, in my eyes, doing well and on top of their stuff, but then decided it was time to be done. And I think we started considering that. Also, the trends I was seeing, to keep an effective price point, we were looking at changing ingredient providers, but nothing tasted as good. I didn’t want to sacrifice what we’d built to save a dollar or so.
Penrod: We didn’t want to run a deli that didn’t sell the best stuff, like it wouldn’t have been Lola’s. And we don’t want to have a deli that we couldn’t afford to eat at, and that our friends can’t afford to eat at. And we really enjoyed the fact that a whole spectrum of people could come in, kids, middle aged people, old folks, construction workers. It did not matter. Like everyone could have a sandwich. And then in the last, I think six months to a year, it was just like, we can’t do it anymore.
Gorman: What was it like when you announced closure?
Penrod: It was scary. It was this feeling like you’re jumping off a cliff, because we knew that we were going to get slammed with business the minute we announced it. So we purposely announced it on a Saturday after we closed [for the week], so that gave us a full day and a half of people getting used to the idea before we opened the following Monday. And it blew our expectations out of the water, which was awesome, but physically and mentally completely debilitating.
Strawderman: I remember feeling some anxiety about it, but also there’s something about making a decision that is so cathartic. I look fondly on those two weeks. There were a couple times that got pretty boo-hooey because sometimes people just have the right thing. There’s this older lady who came up to me in the midst of a crowded Tuesday. She said, “See how many people love you?”
Gorman: What’s been most surprising since you closed the deli?
Penrod: The lowering of my blood pressure. I think I did not realize that that was deli related. I started having to go on blood pressure medicine four years ago or so, and it doesn’t run in my family on either side. So I was surprised. But also like, well, I own two businesses. I’m stressed a lot, whatever, this is fine. I had my routine blood work and checkup about a month after we closed. My doctor was like, “This is amazing! Your blood pressure is the lowest it’s been since you started your medication. Has anything major changed in your life?” And I just started laughing.
Strawderman: After we announced closure, we were going through it. And then when we stopped, I was able to go on tour with my band. We went to Hawaii as a family, we went to the Midwest as a family, and I was able to shut it all off. And I think that was a surprise to me, that I could be so overwhelmed for two weeks, fully immersed in something, and then be able to turn it off. And I think that helped my brain and my heart, my body, tremendously.
Also, I didn’t consider how ingrained we were in people’s routines. And how I’m not going to see certain people as often or not at all. For example, there’s a guy from Long Island. His daughter goes to JMU. He’d stop in and get a pound of pastrami. Living in Long Island he’d get his pastrami from Virginia. He’d say, “They don’t make it like you do.” When I saw him for the last time I couldn’t tell him anything. And that’s sad, because he and I formed a little relationship and were able to chat every time we saw each other and I got to know him. He’s a police officer on Long Island, and my dad was a firefighter. My dad went to New York and worked during 911, so I connected with him about all that. Food brings people together. And that’s one of the sadder parts. Not seeing all the relationships we formed here.
Gorman: What do you miss most about the deli?
Penrod: The sandwiches and the people. I wish I could have a little pocket Logan to take out and put in my kitchen. I miss there being a deli in Harrisonburg, that’s the biggest thing. That was the hardest thing about closing.
Strawderman: I miss the ability to execute my ideas. I’ve been cooking at home a lot, and whatever, but it’s not the same. It’s like having a whole kitchen at your disposal. We joked that I was kind of like a sandwich mayor. I could tell you maybe 150 people’s orders, but I don’t know their names. There’s a guy named Matt who would come in every Monday and Thursday. He gets a Hometown Hero with horsey instead of mayonnaise, and if we saw him early enough, we’d throw it on and try to get it done before he could pay.
Gorman: What aspirations do you have for the future? What’s next for you in your food journey?
Penrod: We’re not opening another restaurant or doing a pop-up. Logan and I are working on a recipe book. He’s in charge of reducing the recipes and I’m working on the layout, production, and printing. We’ll include the brine recipe for the pastrami and corned beef, famous sauce, sides, cookies, sandwich builds. We’re hoping to have it done in time for people to pre-order in the fall and receive in time for the holidays.
Strawderman: I’m looking for something food-adjacent. Something where I can build relationships with people. I think my brain is still in entrepreneur-mode, but I know my life needs to chill out for a couple years. I have three whole menus for other stuff on my phone. And looking at buildings. Like, if I could get a certain spot, I have a pretty good idea for it. I go down a rabbit hole until it’s done. So maybe one day I’ll do something else.
Gorman: What are some of your go-to spots in town to eat or drink?
Penrod: Bella Luna, Golden Pony. El Sol, that’s probably my favorite. And not just in all of Harrisonburg, but all of Virginia, all of anywhere. My husband and I have been going since they were a little hole in the wall on the corner of Elizabeth and Federal downtown. I also love Xenia Kebab.
Strawderman: Jacktown, Golden Pony, Mashita, Ruby’s Arcade, El Charro, Golden China, Vito’s. In Broadway, Double Dragon, Roman Pizza, Italian Touch.
Gorman: Who would you love to cook for? Anyone in the world who you admire.
Penrod: This is going to sound dumb, but it’s true, I am a huge fan girl of the band Crab Action, and specifically Nat King Cruel, the lead singer. So I think while I have cooked for Grant Penrod too many times to count, that’s sort of like my role in the family because he does the laundry and I do the cooking. Yet, I have never cooked for Nat King Cruel* before.
*Nat King Cruel is the stage name of Grant Penrod, Lauren Penrod’s husband.
Strawderman: I have the cheesy ones, the culinary greats. I’ve learned a lot from Anthony Bourdain and Guy Fieri, as juxtaposed as those two are.
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