Prime Deli, 13 September 2018

Today? Today I didn’t know what I wanted but I knew what the search results were for “italian deli” after yesterday’s kerfuffle and I kind of kicked things off with “polish deli” even though that wasn’t a search. And tomorrow I might try “french deli” or “belgian deli” or “spanish” or “german” but today? Today I had had enough fucking around. Today I was turning to God’s own chosen people, today’s deli had to be

!יהודי

Really? That’s as big as we can make the fucking thing? I mean, I know Tumblr features are limited but I’m really trying to make this a big Jew thing. It’s for the Jews. That’s seriously as big as it gets? And for god’s sake - Wait, sorry, for Moses’s sake - It’s Moses they get down with, right? For Moses’s sake, can’t we get it to center align? I mean, goddamn, this is some meshugas shit. Hold on. I think I can find a workaround.

That’s better.
So I Google “jewish deli” and I get back a bunch fakakta dreck and then I see this place called Prime Deli. Listing says three and a half miles, map says five, same schtuss as yesterday but it’s only nineteen minutes by bike, schtup it, let’s do this.
So I get there and, wwhhoooo, boy! Remember when I was the only white guy in Pappy’s? Well, now I am the only goy in this shopping center and no matter how many times the schikses and Kafe Nasty have told me I look Jewish, the chosen people take one look at me and they know there’s no way my black Irish ass is anywhere close to being Jewish, even if I have been bris’d.
Can I use bris as a past tense verb? What’s the past tense of bris? Just circumcised? OK. Circumcised.
So they know a goy when they see one, foreskinned or not.
Wait, would foreskinned mean you still have it or you had it cut off because if an animal is skinned, you’ve removed its - What? Just stick with circumcised? OK.
So they know a goy when they - Look, I think everybody gets the point and beside that, when was the last time, aside from Eli Roth, anybody saw a six foot Jew?

I kid, I kid, sit down before you plotz!
ANYhoo, I actually did get some dirty looks from these two middle-aged Jewish women in the parking lot while I was locking up my bike. I wasn’t wearing one of my offensive t-shirts, I was wearing my St. Cloud Parks & Rec t that I asshole taxed my old roommate Leah when she moved out after two months…
Strangely never to be heard from again. Like one of the many minor characters from Saved By The Bell.
I don’t know, maybe it was my Tigers cap. Not that it’s old and frayed in this middle class neighborhood, maybe because it’s got the English D on the front and this is Twins Territory.

But I’ll tell you this:
I get inside the deli and everybody is super nice. Like for real some of the best customer service I’ve ever had. The woman I presumed to be the manager immediately determined that I was in for lunch, for here or to go - to go - grabbed me a menu, gave me a minute to look over it and I see this thing called The Mad Russian, billed as “turkey, pastrami, sauerkraut, and Russian horseradish dressing served on marble rye” and you know how many shekels this thing was going for?
Actually, wait, I can look this up.
Sixty one shekels, this sandwich.
What?
Oh.
Seventeen dollars, this sandwich.
And I ask the lady how big this thing is and she gestures it’s about yay big by yay big and in all honesty, it looked like it would have been worth the seventeen beans. Thing is though, I’m not trying to eat that much. Sloshing around in my kishkes and I got another fifteen twenty miles to ride? That’s not going to end well, bubbe. So I ask her if I can get a half of one (also because I’m cheap) (no, if you want to go to that place in this review, you can do so independently, I’m going to take enough heat for the height joke) (and you really have no idea how many highlight-and-deletes I’ve done on the jokes up to this point right here).
Anyway, she says not on these sandwiches but on their basic sandwiches like turkey or pastrami or I don’t think she said ham, I think she said corned beef. So I go with a half a pastrami and she asks me what kind of side and I opt for fruit but it would have been grapes or pineapples so I switched it up to coleslaw and I got a can of Pepsi, and while all this is going down, the woman I took to be the pastry chef is asking me questions about biking, for real, everybody in the place is super nice.
Then I sit and I read some of the Chapo book that I’ve been reading slowly on and off and then my order comes up and the manager asks me if I’d like mayo or mustard or spicy brown mustard and I tell her I’ll just take yellow mustard and she grabs a few packet and tosses them in and then she asks me if I’m taking this home and I tell her I’m probably going to sit in a park somewhere - which wound up being Fern Hill Park, which wasn’t much of a park in terms of nature stuff, it was more like a tennis court, a picnic shelter, and a playground - and she hands me some plasticwear and then I ask about my Pepsi and she says, “I knew I was going to forget that,” and walks back to the cooler and that’s when the pastry chef pops back in with more questions about my biking and then, as the manager hands me my Pepsi, she tells me she does a seventy two mile marathon in upstate New York every year and then she just stops and goes back to work, the manager is tending to a trainee and I’m a little farmischt but I still get out:
“Thanks again, have a good day!” to which nobody replies and I tip on out the door and head to the park I see on Google maps.
And as I’m unlocking my bike, this dude getting in a minivan gives me a funny look and this stock boy from the grocer next door pokes his head out and gives me a shitty look and I’m actually starting to wonder now: Am I not allowed to be here? Why is everybody in the parking lot giving me looks of varying derision?
No, I’m not joking. The parking lot sitch had me legitimately fucked up. The deli? The deli was cool. The parking lot, however, you would have thought I killed the Lindbergh kid. It was actually unnerving.

SO! After all that, how was my sandwich? I took one look at it and I thought to myself, “Please tell me they made this pastrami in-house. I did not come all the way out to the suburbs for shipped-in pastrami.”
By the way, I looked up their website after getting back from my ride, they tout that they do things by hand, by people, not by machine, which isn’t a definite absolute but it’s vague enough that it gives me room for hope.
I pick up my mustard packets and - What? Shit, she accidentally gave me Hellman’s mayo. Easy mistake, it’s a yellow tube. Should I go back or - No, I don’t want to look like a kvetch. So, pastrami on rye with mayo it is. How bad could that be?
It was good. The pastrami was peppery but no overly so and had a buttery savory tone to it, the brining and smoking process naturally depriving it of any metallic blood notes, and it was moist without being soggy and had only a thin sheen of grease on it.
The bread had visible caraway seeds in it and was probably the palest marble rye I’d ever seen but it paired nicely with the meat.
The coleslaw could have used more carrots but it seemed to be shredded freshly (I did get there pretty soon after they opened) because the cabbage and carrot were still crisp. That and they gave me a generous sized side. Not like the little cups you get from Cecil’s or the insulting cups you get upcharged for at Caffrey’s. No, this was like if you were to order a whole side for dining in.

I didn’t get to try my pickle spear because, like a schlamazel, the wind picked up my to-go box and knocked it off the bench and, I’m not lying to you, that bummed me out and I thought about just dusting my pickle off but the parks board probably chemically coats this grass or something and I just don’t want to risk it, so I had to throw my pickle spear away.
Hard truth time: Half a pastrami sandwich with a human-sized serving of coleslaw and a can of Pepsi? Forty six and a half shekels Thirteen dollars. Easily my most expensive lunch this week. My previous lunches? Just a sandwich and drink? Ten beans before tip. Reasonable at some places, a happy surprise at others. This? Thirteen wasn’t bad and this is a different neighborhood after all.
No, not like that. I mean it’s St. Louis Park. I don’t fuck about in the suburbs but I know they operate differently than in the city proper. I’ve been to three delis and a dive this week, all in town, away from downtown, I pay ten beans. I go to a nice deli, I pay downtown Minneapolis prices. That’s all.
So, a lil bit on the pricey side but it was money well-spent. I liked their pastrami and if I find out it’s shipped in, it’ll break my heart because how many places in biking distance make their own pastrami?
Go give them your money.