Alice Y.
Yelp
3.5 stars for service, taste, and pricing practices. Prices were absent from the order forms and wall signage regarding the sandwiches, salads, sides, fountain drinks, alcohol, and snacks. Only sandwich add-ons had prices. For $34 after tax and tip, we got 1 full size New York (pastrami sandwich), 1 half size Build Your Own with no extras, and two fountain drinks. If I knew the prices beforehand, I'd have stuck with water for myself.
The New York was very wet and messy to eat at the ends. I enjoyed the middle section with meat, bread, cheese, mustard, mayo, and pickle. They piled on more pickles than that of the Build Your Own, which made the sandwich a touch salty. The pastrami was great and tasted more like roast beef than the actual roast beef. It was meaty, flavorful, and not too salty, as I usually find pastrami to be.
My Build Your Own sandwich was on sourdough. The bread had great texture (crunch and chew), but lacked sourness. I couldn't taste the jalapeno havarti at all. I was most disappointed by the thick-sliced roast beef, which was very bland. What a shame; the meat was soft and juicy! The ratio of bread to veg to meat was also not to my liking. While I sat at the table, I wished that I could go back in time, swap my roast beef for pastrami, and change my cheese. On the plus side, the ingredients were fresher than popular sandwich chains. The size was about the same.
As a side note, the deli appeared to be a house that was converted into a restaurant. Street parking wasn't hard on a Thursday at 1:30 pm in the residential neighborhood. There was a friendly employee greeting people and explaining the menu to us. Only the Build Your Own can come as a half size sandwich. Certain breads, such as the Dutch Crunch, cannot be made into half size. You can write "hot" on your order form if you'd like the bread toasted and cheese melted. After giving our orders to the cashier and paying, we walked over to the shaded patio outside. When our order was ready, they brought it outside and called our name.