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| - If you're suspicious of the reviews for this place, I get it. One of the reviewers has given every single place either a four or a five-star review. You might justifiably wonder how hard he is to please. The other guy did only one review-- for here-- and he gave it five stars.Plus, his hometown is in Texas
I'm a sour old S.O.B who used to be a chef. I gave Slyman's four stars-- partly dinging it on the food. I came here because I was looking for something different and they advertised in a community shopper with some pretty good coupons. And I will come back here.
Let's start with the obvious sticking point. It's definitely possible to do a good sandwich shop inside a gas station. If you make sandwiches, you're only as good (or as bad) as your ingredients. You buy the bread, meat and veggies from wholesalers-- very possibly the same suppliers as any other restaurant. There's no reason you can't be as good. (Even a gyro is mostly prepackaged.)
They have one genuinely killer dish here-- the hummus. It's locally made from scratch and ridiculously good. You get about eight ounces for $3.99-- plain, spicy, roasted red pepper and pomegranate. It comes with two pita breads that are toasted and sprinkled with herbs. It dusts anything you can buy in a store-- and from many restaurants.
The plain is, I'm pretty sure, chick peas, salt, lemon juice, tahini and olive oil (there was a pool of oil atop the hummus-- good stuff, too). Very light and creamy-- not clumpy and thick. I think I make a better one (I add cumin and onion juice), but this was very good. My wife, as it happened, went to Aladdin's Tuesday and brought back some. This was better.
The pomegranate is interesting-- if you like the sweetness it adds, you might like it a lot. (I was nonplussed, but it comes with all the chunkies on top-- don't like it, just eat off the top layer and the base product is underneath. (I haven't had the red pepper or spicy yet. Since they all use the same hummus, I'd assume they are good.)
The pita bread is as good, if not better. Since we had them in both the gyro and the hummus, I'm sold on the quality. They'll sell you an extra pita for a buck. I'd do it.
It's hard to screw up a gyro-- you buy a loaf of meat, roast it on the veritcal spit and slice it You judge them on the amount of meat you get (I'd guess six ounces), the quality of the sauce (pretty good, not great), and the pita.(exceptional).
The shredded lettuce was dismal and the tomatoes were pretty sad. I'd skip those. The big disappointment was not getting sliced onions. But it was $5.99 for a very good sandwich.
The good news about the corned beef: the rye bread was good (they toast it), they include mustard on both sides and some decent swiss cheese. There is also a lot of meat; they order the Vienna brand.
The hitch is that Vienna corned beef is fairly dismal stuff. it's fatty and Vienna doesn't know how to slice corned beef, so the sandwich is chewy. I would buy a pound of it from this store so I could re-grind it to make corned beef hash with. I would not eat it in sandwiches.
And, yes, you can buy all their sandwich meats by the pound-- including the gyro meat. Being able to buy a pound of cooked gyro meat is, in and of itself, a reason to come back here.
I haven't tried the deli sandwiches, so I can't say. It looks like they buy pretty good product, so I'd be confident. (I don't know where they get their chicken breasts or their cheesesteak beef. I'll try them next trip, and see how that goes)
Other notes: They drive over to get doughnuts from Spudnits every day. Kudos for that. Since they're across the street from a Becker's Doughnuts, it's not a big selling point.
Unless Becker's is closed. Here is a big selling point. they're open late-- 11 most nights, midnight some. (Another reason not to eat at Taco Hell.) Also, the people working here are incredibly cheerful and friendly. They genuinely want to make customers happy and get you to come back. You can have whatever you want any way you want.
The charm is infectious. How can you not like a place that is so eager to please customers that it mentions-- on the deli menu-- that they also sell high end-cigars and live bait?
Don't get me wrong. If you live in Willoughby or Eastlake, DO NOT drive over here to try anything but the hummus. But these guys are 15 minutes away from my house, they got two things I would definitely buy (gyro and hummus) and I'd be willing to bet they make a better sandwich than Subway. And they just bought a fryer, so you'll probably be able to get fries with your order soon (Right now, the sides are limited to chips.)
As John Bloom used to say at the end of his movie reviews, "Joe Bob says, check this sucker out."
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