Deli Bust

The light at the end of the tunnel...3 lbs of gummy goodness

I love bank holidays. Before Jody worked for bank, I actually didn't like them mostly because we didn't get mail. But, now I'm a fan. You see, when Jody has bank holidays and I'm not too busy with work, I'll take the day off too. On days that I'm too busy for a full bank holiday, at least I get to have lunch with him.

Since I am pretty busy juggling a bunch of deadlines right now, I just took a long lunch off with Jody to celebrate Columbus Day. We headed to a new place in River North: Steve's Deli. Jody had been really excited to try this place since he first heard about it. There is another Steve's Deli in Detroit, and this is their first Chicagoland restaurant.

We didn't know that yesterday was Steve's Deli's opening day. As regular restaurant goers, we don't typically go to new places in the first couple months since they usually have a lot of kinks to work out before hitting their stride. But, we figured how could they really mess up a deli? The answer: they can mess it up plenty.

Seriously, Steve's Deli was a disaster. It was jam-packed with people waiting in both the takeout and eat-in areas, and the managers, servers and hostesses were all totally clueless. We waited for about 30 minutes for a table (no big deal) and then waited another 30 minutes for a waiter to even come by our table (bigger deal). That's after we asked two managers if they could send a waiter over.

Looking around the restaurant, we realized that only one table had food in the whole place. Everyone else was just sitting there with empty water glasses looking irritated, constantly glancing over their shoulders for their waiter or their food. Once food did start coming out, almost every table seemed to be getting the wrong food, cold food that was supposed to be hot, regular soda when it was supposed to be diet, and so on. Two ladies sitting by us finally told the waiter that they couldn't wait any longer and they were leaving (they had been there almost two hours waiting for just two simple sandwiches!). And you know what? The waiter just let them leave empty-handed. No gift certificate. No cupcakes. Not even a freakin' bagel.

We actually fared better than most patrons...mostly because we actually got our food. Of course, our order was wrong. I ordered a half sandwich and got a whole one (no biggie) and Jody ordered a hot, lean overstuffed pastrami sandwich and got a cold, fatty, chewy, super-skimpy pastrami sandwich instead. Everyone knows how much Jody treasures his food, so this was all bad. But we figured if we sent anything back we would never see our food again. So Jody powered through the nastywich.

I highly doubt we'll be back at Steve's anytime soon. Even if they do get their act together, the pastrami was still way subpar and that typically puts a black mark on any deli in our world.

Even though it was a pretty annoying experience, it was kind of entertaining just to see an entire restaurant of disgruntled customers. I've never seen that in any Chicago restaurant before, even brand new ones.

No worries, though, the entire lunch outing was not a bust. When we ran into CVS afterward, I heard Jody a couple aisles over proclaim: "Oh my Lord!" And when I went over there he was happily holding up a 3-pound bag of gummy fruit slices that were marked at 75% off. Sweet. He was so happy that it was almost like the pastrami incident never happened. Almost.