Lee’s Deli(s): As Simple, Fast and Easy as a USC Coed.
Written: Oct 24 '02 (Updated Oct 24 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: It's better than MacDonalds
Cons: It's not quite as good as Taco Bell
The Bottom Line: Look, Lee's isn't the kind of place you're gonna go looking for a review of. You just want to know if it's safe to eat there. It's safe.
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| Mr.Eyore's Full Review: Lee's Deli |
In Los Angeles lives a mythical figure called Angeline.
Since at least 1976, billboards throughout West L.A. have advertised the existence of a zaftig, pink-clad blonde with enormous fake breasts, who doesn’t seem to be selling anything. Nobody knows what the billboards mean. She’s not an actress, apparently. She’s not a “product” in any normal sense. She just is, and part of me likes to think she was the first pure celebrity, famous for nothing other than being famous, even if just locally, and even if she does look a bit like a soul-less Morgana the Kissing Bandit. Anyone who lived in Los Angeles during the last quarter of the last century knows who she is.
I once saw Angeline, driving along Sunset Boulevard in a convertible pink Corvette. I was 19, and my girlfriend had an old Celica. And I told her to follow the Pink Corvette. I had to know where Angeline lived. I didn’t care if we had to follow her all night, I was going to find out where the pink Corvette eventually ended up. I figured it would tell me something about the woman: What she was all about. Part of me wanted to discover that she lived in a crappy studio apartment with a carport in the lousiest part of Hollywood, or to see her park her car at some two-bit ad agency, disappear for a while inside, and drive away in a Gremlin. Yes, I’m aware this makes me a stalker, thank you. But I never found out anything. By 1987, Angeline was adept at picking up tails, and she lost us in three quick turns in the hills above Sunset.
In San Francisco, I like to think of Lee as the local Angeline, even though he (or she) actually has a product to sell. It’s just that this Lee, if that is his/her real name, is so ubiquitous, and his/her product so obviously lacking in profit-making potential, that it’s hard to believe he/she isn’t doing the whole “Lee’s Deli” thing just to get his/her name out there.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that there are six million Lee’s Deli’s in downtown San Francisco, enough for everyone in the city to eat there for breakfast, lunch and dinner for two days without ever having to bump into another person eating their breakfast, lunch and dinner at a Lee’s. And they appear to be asexually reproducing at a rate of about 10,000 per day. Within a two block radius of my office, there are three of them. I know of at least five more downtown. And there’s always a line. And it always takes approximately 38 seconds to get from the back of the line, to the sandwich makers to the cash register, and it costs whatever you found in the seat of your office chair.
Seriously, the place can not be making money. I eat there like 4 times a week, because I just know one of these days I’m gonna walk in and one of the ladies behind the counter is gonna say to me, “I pay you buck fifty to eat pastrami sandwich.” In which case, I’m quitting my job and doing nothing but eating at Lee’s deli all day every day for fun and profit.
The Lee’s nearest my office has about 5 people who work behind the regular sandwich counter. It literally takes them about 90 seconds to ask you what kind of bread you want, what kind of meat, what toppings, make the thing, wrap it up, write the price on the wrapper and say “THANKYOUNEXTORDERPLEASE!”
the sandwiches
Pretty much any kind of sandwich you want, Lee’s can make for you. They’ve got nine or ten kinds of bread (Rye, sliced sourdough, sourdough roll, pumpernickel, white, wheat, Dutch crunch, french roll), eight or nine kinds of meat-product, two mustards, mayo, lettuce, tomato, pickle and whatnot. A Salami and Cheddar sammich is $2.85. PB&J, $1.85. Maybe a buck for any of 15 kinds of chips. You can get the whole works for lunch for under five bucks.
Which isn’t to say the sammiches are all that good. They’re not. But they’re generally as good as you’re likely to make for yourself if you’re rushing out in the morning, and unlike you, they’ve got the fresh tomato and they wash their knives.
Most of the meats are just fine, but lacking ever so slightly. They’ve got fresh sliced turkey breast, but the turnkey is pretty dry. They’ve got warmed up pastrami, but it’s fattier than most of us like. They make their chicken salad daily ... out of dark meat chicken. And the bacon’s never quite as cooked as it ought to be. And they never give you as much cheese as you’d like. And the bread could probably benefit from a little toasting, but you wouldn’t dare ask ‘em to do it, ‘cause it would really mess with the whole lunch in 90 seconds thing.
Some of the Lee’s make more than just sandwiches. The one closest to me has a little burrito and soup station, a salad bar, and a table loaded with premade sushi and bento box-like things.
burritos – sort of
The burritos are fairly pitiful, but I eat them pretty regularly anyway. You’ve got your choice of four kinds of tortillas, which they will load with rice, real guacamole, decent sour cream, lettuce, weak salsa, cilantro, jalapenos, cheese and your choice of bean and meat fillings. It’s the fillings that are the weak link. The black beans are way too watery, and the refried beans are unfathomably dry and lumpy. The mesquite chicken, which I usually get, is edible, if a little watery, but most of the other meat fillings are disgusting. There is a dry sliced turkey (probably the same turkey they use for the sandwiches), a dry sliced chicken, and the beef choice, which appears to be pre-formed, pre-cooked, gray, hamburger patties, sliced into half-inch strips.
If you call it a burrito, you’ll find yourself unhappy and possibly angry. But if you call it a “Wrap” and note that it only costs $4.65 and is as big as your head, you’ll feel just fine about the whole thing.
The burrito station also makes breakfast wraps, which I’ve found to be a miraculous hangover cure, at $2.85. It’s just a couple of microwaved eggs, melted cheese and a handful of bacon or those sliced hamburger patties, wrapped in a tortilla. But at 9:30 a.m. on three hours sleep, they do a body good.
soup and salad
Recently, Lee’s added to their burrito station a little a la carte soup thing. For around two bucks, you get a bathtub-sized container of chicken broth, and you pay around a quarter each to add won-tons, sliced pork, sliced chicken, vermicelli or chow fun noodles and/or some other unidentifiable things. I haven’t tried any of them, but in a few months it’s been open, the soup station appears to have become pretty popular, even with the presence of the far superior San Francisco Soup Company only a few doors away.
The salad bar, sold by weight, is a little less expensive than other local salad-by-the-pound type places, and the offerings are a little less impressive: A few kinds of lettuce, carrots, corn, garbanzo beans, sprouts, cottage cheese, quartered sliced of some of their sandwich meats, freakishly ever-fresh looking hard-boiled eggs, and a few prepared pasta salads. About six of your standard salad dressings and some Saltines round it out. Nothing impressive, and nothing you’d make a special trip to Lee’s for.
In conclusion, almost nothing about Lee’s Deli is special or worth making any special trip for, but if you work downtown, or are visiting on business, there’s a good chance that a Lee’s Deli will fall on your head each time you walk out of a building. And as long as it’s right there, it’s a totally acceptable place to pick yourself up a simple five dollar lunch.
Recommended:
Yes
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Mr.Eyore
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I come for the pervasive sense of elitist self-importance and semi-witty expressions of faux camaraderie
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