Roscoe's Famous Deli Restaurant Review

Sun, 24 Apr 2005 17:16:40 -0400

Roscoe's Famous Deli is brought to you by the owners of Hero's Bar and Grill, which was one of the only restaurants in Downtown Fullerton during its dark pawn-shop-days, and a favorite of mine. Roscoe's has been a long time coming, being developed for more than two years before opening just recently. Because of this, and because Jerry's Famous Deli and New York's (and Las Vegas') Stage Deli are both favorites of mine, I had very high hopes for Roscoe's. Perhaps too high.

Perhaps the the problem is that when I think "Deli," I'm thinking about what is popularly known as a "Jewish Deli." Such a Deli has a huge menu with at least 100 items, if not three times this. Of course there's cold sandwiches with freshly sliced deli meat (aka "cold cuts," where I grew up) on fresh bread, but there's also breakfast dishes, hot open-faced sandwiches, bagels with lox and cream cheese, matzah-ball soup, and so forth. There may even be full dinners with steak, fish, burgers, or even pizza.

And compared to this, Roscoe's menu comes up at little short. The menu has exactly 15 items, and all of them are (mostly cold) sandwiches. True, they are piled so high with freshly-sliced meat that you'll want to remove some in order to get your mouth around them. And true, my ham and my wife's turkey were very tasty. But what we're really talking about here is a sandwich shop, not what I would call a deli. Whenever I go to a deli for the first time, I always try a beef brisket sandwich and matzah-ball soup to get a feel for the joint, but not at Roscoe's. And not to be a cold-cut snob, but I wouldn't say that there's anything special about the meats Roscoe's uses; I can (and do) buy better cold cuts from my local Stater Brothers or Henry's Market for around $7 a pound.

FullertonReviews.com - Deli

Roscoe's Famous Deli Restaurant Review