Decent Deli - What's in a name?

What’s in a name, could a rose smell as sweet……. you know the line. I have always wondered why a restaurant would name itself the Decent Deli. Pretty much the same tact used by that old BBQ chain: “Damon’s – a place for ribs”. That’s setting expectations pretty low right out of the gate. Maybe they think you won’t be disappointed that way, you got what was advertised.

Marketing banter aside, I decided to take them up on that promise and ordered the house specialty, a corned beef sandwich and potato pancake. As you can see to the left, it looks pretty attractive on the plate – thick sandwich, golden potato cake and lots of crunchy dill pickles. What could be wrong with this?

Let’s take a piece of that bead off……. Humm, looks a little dry and scorched in here. Maybe it’s just this side. No such luck, all the pieces have a similar degree of (for lack of a better word) “overheatedness”. What the hell did they use to warm this meat? Flamethrower? Blast furnace? Perhaps I just ordered the crispy beef sandwich by mistake. The bread was “decent”, pretty off-the-shelf light rye, but the meat was just too dry to meet the decent standard. Unfortunately, the potato pancake came up short as well. Too thin and leathery – not the crisp outside, cake- like inside you would expect. Rename it “potato puck” and you will set the correct expectation.

Hopefully I just caught them on a bad day, because it is a favorite (or used to be?) Blue Ash lunch spot. Bad day aside, a good restaurant is known for consistency of product. I don’t care for going to places known for “ups and downs”, I’m just not a gambling kind of hound!