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| - I believe that "Weiss" is German for white. How appropriate. The food couldn't get any more white, bland and tasteless.
I was really eager to try this place. The pictures looked great, the reviews were good, and I saw on the menu that they had cabbage soup, which I loved from Foxy's and from Jackie's in Commercial Center- two late lamented delis which reveal how incredibly old I am.
So, and equally decrepit friend and I grabbed our walkers and shuffled on down.
It was busy, but we were seated quickly and service was efficient if not particularly friendly. So far, so good.
We were disappointed that they didn't bring us a dish of pickles or a basket of rye bread, which were standard in the aforementioned old-school spots, but then, nobody pumps your gas for you anymore, either, so still o.k.
I was trying to be conservative on calories so I had a 1/2 brisket on rye with cabbage soup, my friend went wild with a triple decker concoction involving corned beef, pastrami, and cole slaw.
First, we got the soup. I was expecting a rich, tangy, tomato base. This was more brown. You know how when you cook soup and store it overnight it's usually better the next day? Well, this was more like they had been reheating it and keeping it hot every day for about a week so it just tasted old. The accompanying hard toasted bagel slices were clearly a creative use of leftovers that would have been thrown away. I am a crostini fan so I liked them. My friend did not.
Then came the sandwiches. They looked good. Until I opened mine to add mustard. The brisket was mostly fat, and wet, soggy fat at that. Like catching a glimpse of myself getting out of the shower. Her pastrami and corned beef were almost tasteless. Again, I think they sliced the meat and held it in hot water repeatedly until they managed to leach out any semblance of flavor.
The only thing they didn't soak were the pickles, which still tasted raw. After sampling those and the flavorless rye bread, I no longer yearned for the free samples.
I will say that the chicken noodle soup looked great, as did the breakfast ordered at another table. But ours LOOKED good, too. And what does it say about a menu where the standout is chicken soup? Bland, bland, bland.
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