Geoff Ellis
Mum Foods Smokehouse and Delicatessen | Austin
NOVEMBER 2023
Though he grew up in Central Texas, Geoff Ellis spent much of his young life connecting with his Jewish heritage, visiting his grandparents in New York City. His grandfather owned a jewelry store a few doors down from the city's most famous pastrami destination, Katz’s Deli. From a young age, Ellis noted the connection between Texas brisket and New York pastrami, something that he would carry with him. But it wasn’t just visits with his grandparents that fostered a food obsession within Ellis—his sister moved to San Francisco when he was a teenager, and when he went out West to visit her, he picked up cookbooks from Tartine and Chez Panisse. He eventually enrolled at Texas State University to study food science and nutrition, while baking bread on the side.
In 2012, Ellis held his first farmers market pop-up, where he sold bread, barbecue, and pickled vegetables. Over the next several years, his pop-up would continue to grow, and he experimented with the relationship between his heritage and where he grew up. In 2017, Texas Monthly visited, launching Ellis into a short-term brick-and-mortar in 2019, where he sold Jewish-inflected barbecue. He closed briefly during the pandemic, then reopened Mum Foods Smokehouse and Delicatessen in Austin’s Windsor Park in 2022. Ellis seamlessly connects his concept with his background, serving delightful barbecue with Jewish accents alongside a killer bread program, as well as a full deli case complete with classics like smoked chicken salad and house-pickled vegetables.
