Storefront in a busy strip mall with tight seating inside. There are a few tables outside as well if weather is not too miserable; they are undercover. So we sat ourselves at a booth in the very back near the loo and server station.
Oh: Christmas decor on walls and Christmas music on the radio! I almost walked out just based on that!! It ain't even Thanksgiving yet!!!! I asked why they're doing that and it's the only the owner wants played. Well guess what? I'm not a grinch but I'm not Clark Griswold either, and NO: Rusty is NOT still in the Navy either!
First server who interacted with us was a loud, short spitfire of a girl with the most annoying, obnoxious laugh. You could hear her yammer and hyena holler from a half mile away if the wind was right. Then another waitress, a skinny blond older lady with a definite NY/NJ accent, took over. She was just so so too.
Queen Bee decided on their daily special salad, which is called Jay's Fried Chicken Salad. Oddly enough, it was a salad topped with chopped-up fried chicken. It had the usual lettuce, cherry tomatoes, plus pepperoncini, hard boiled egg and a few other items.
I had the Pickles Favorite...it's actually a triple decker with steamed pastrami, corned beef, Swiss, Russian and cole slaw. My bread choice was rye: as a true NYC boy, I sure as hell wasn't gonna get it on cinnamon raisin or whole wheat, ya know.
Both my sandwich and the Queen Bee's salad were mediocre to mildly OK at best. My sandwich came with a pickle (so-so) and choice of pasta or potato salad or cole slaw. Potato salad is homemade, they say. It certainly tasted that way, and again, it was just okay. Mayo, a little chopped onion and red skinned taters all mixed in a bowl with not much else.
Queen Bee says her fried chicken pieces were salty too. She's one who uses salt regularly so if she complained, then you know it was salty. I tasted a piece of it and I agree...too salty for me. Her salad was at least plentiful and she seemed to enjoy it otherwise. Hey: it's a salad; big deal.
The rye bread that came with my sandwich certainly AIN'T the good sturdy rye I'm accustomed to in NY. This stuff could barely hold together with all the fixings contained between the three slices. Russian dressing and the barely-there slaw were both nondescript. Meats were lukewarm at best, too.
I suppose one could say it was adequate. However, we only drank water and we didn't do any add on or other up charge things. So with tax and tip, was this stuff worth $32? Double HELL NO!!!! I do like to try different spots, but this pickle definitely left a half-sour and none-too-kosher aftertaste, from the nondescript service to the nondescript food all the way to the joint as a whole. read more