Boris’ Kosher Meats, one of the Cleveland area’s few kosher butcher shops, has been sold by owner Boris Mikhli after 43 years in University Heights, the Cleveland Jewish News reported. Mikhli purchased the building that housed the business in 1983 and ran the store ever since, surviving the COVID-19 pandemic.
Four Decades of Kosher Butchering
Mikhli came to the United States from Ukraine in 1974 and settled in the Cleveland area in 1976. When he bought the store, it was a semi-kosher market, and he made it fully kosher. “You don’t go halfway,” he told the Cleveland Jewish News when the shop marked 40 years in 2023. “If you’re in the business, you deliver what people ask for.”
Mikhli told the CJN in 2023 that the store opened selling mostly meat, then added a deli case on a customer’s recommendation and later expanded into side dishes and groceries. He also began making sausage and jerky in-house, and of the sausages, the lamb sausage is the bestseller.
Mikhli credits personal service for getting the store through the COVID-19 pandemic: if a customer asked for something he did not have, he made sure to have it the next time they came in, he told the CJN. “We do it with love,” he said of the business.
Mikhli, a Beachwood resident, said in 2023 that both of his sons are dentists who make their own living and would not be taking over the business. At the time he said he planned to stay open as long as he was healthy: “One day at a time.” Of the area’s other kosher butcher, he said there was plenty of business for both shops and that the two helped each other along the way.
Details
Address14406 Cedar Road, University Heights, OH…