Cecils Deli St. Paul
As a New Yorker, I feel qualified to comment on my experience at Cecil's this past weekend. My first issue is this: a good deli should provide a plate of pickles much as any other restaurant provides bread gratis. No pickles were provided. I started with the matzah ball soup, which was adequate, matzah balls slightly less fluffy than ideal, but acceptable. Then I had the pastrami on rye. Now, you can order it hot or unheated, and I had the latter. What they brought was ice cold pastrami on rye, served on a steaming hot plate. A "cold" pastrami sandwich should never be served with ice cold pastrami, it should be just about room temp, this tasted like they just grabbed it out of the fridge and slapped it on bread. The pastrami iteself was pretty good, but hard to tell. And serving it on a steaming hot plate made the bread soggy. Perhaps I should have ordered it hot, but nevertheless, disappointed.
Anyone have any comments about Cecils? I went to the one in St Paul, perhaps the other location is better?
By Alice
on Apr 28, 2004 03:27 PM
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If you want a decent deli sandwich stay far away from any cecils.
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My husband and I have banned Cecil's--evidently it was great years ago, but we had a horrible experience there. Mediocre food and awful service.
Have you been to Brother's Deli in downtown Minneapolis? It is everything a deli should be, but is unfortunately only open for weekday day lunches.
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My wife and I have eaten at Cecils for the past five years and I have not one thing negative to say about the service, food or the bakery. Although they might want to hide the Gifilte Fish...yikes. Aaron has probably taken our orders 99% of the time and everything is always great. And seriously, Brothers' Deli? Minneapolis is to authentic delis, what Tokyo is to authentic delis.
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Nik1300, I see this is your first post. Welcome to Chowhound!
The most recent post on this thread was five years ago. (In fact, none of these user names from 2004 are active now.) Here are five threads where the references to Cecil's Deli are within the last twelve months:
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/612395
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/614455
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/490297
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/558011
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/539706
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I've lived in the Highland Mac/Groveland area for 18 years. Recently after reading a Kathy Jenkins review I decided to try Cecil's. I ordered the typical Pastrami on rye with chicken liver and spicy mustard. Let me tell you to say I was disappointed is an understatment. The amount of actual Pastrami on my sandwhich was about 3 tablespoons. The spicy mustard came in packets, and they had the nerve to charge almost $9.00. for this puny sandwhich. Never again will I got to this so called deli.
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You know the mustard's in a bottle on the table right?
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My experiences with Cecil's are similar to Alice's. It's OK, but not great. I wish the sandwiches were thicker. For the price, and for St. Paul, I think they are a bit overpriced. I'm not saying there are better deli's in Minneapolis. But I do think Cecil's relies on its reputation.
As far as the "I've visited every Manhattan deli from 125th to battery park and Cecil's is far and above better then any", well, I think that's a bit of an exaggeration.
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