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Blues City Deli
By Gabe Hartwig, Jane Henderson and Fred
Ortlip
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
10/17/2008
Blues City Deli in the Benton Park neighborhood prides itself on
using flavors from cities famous for the blues: New Orleans,
Memphis, Chicago and St. Louis.
— Our order: BBQ Pulled Pork Po-Boy with tangy Tennessee sauce
($5.95), Italian Beef with hot peppers ($5.25), BLT Classic ($4.49),
chocolate-chip cookie (79 cents).
— Gabe: "The BLT was filled with plenty of crispy, flavorful bacon.
My only gripe with it was the excessive amount of shredded lettuce.
The pulled pork had a deliciously spicy sauce, and the Italian
Beef's peppers were a nice touch."
— Jane: "The pulled pork is lean and tender — not too fatty. The
tangy Tennessee sauce is good, but it's very peppery. Maybe I'm
wimpier than I thought! If I had some creamy coleslaw, that would
cool down the sauce. The cookie is thick and has plenty of chocolate
chips."
— Fred: "The roast beef is juicy, moist and tender. It's highly
seasoned but tasty. If you like it spicy, this is good — just enough
heat. The bread got a little soggy from the meat, so maybe they
should toast the bread."
— Bottom line: Our lunch from Blues City Deli gets a big thumbs-up.
We didn't have to wait long for our food, and it was wrapped and
labeled nicely. Great food and great value.
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Come On In My Kitchen
Make me a Blues City sandwich,
make it ten feet tall. If you can’t make me a sandwich, I don’t want
nothin’ at all.
By
Rose Martelli - Published: March 29, 2006
Blues City Deli owner Vince Valenza can't recall when he consumed
his first sandwich, or what kind of sandwich it was — "Probably a
loaf of Italian bread and a hunk of cheese" — but he got his first
drum set when he was three years old. He's been pounding the skins
ever since. Around 1989, when he was in his mid-thirties, Valenza
and music buddy Pennsylvania Slim (who still plays out around town)
began immersing themselves in rockabilly, roots music and early rock
& roll. They started with Chuck Berry and made their way to Muddy
Waters, Howlin' Wolf and the like. The blues became their singular
passion. Taking on a bassist, they played little dives and by the
late 1990s were gigging four nights a week at places like the
Broadway Oyster Bar, BB's and Mike & Min's.
The entire time, Valenza dreamed of opening a restaurant. He never
earned a professional culinary education and to this day isn't quite
sure how the desire germinated in him. But around 1985 he approached
a friend who had his own Italian place in north county and asked to
learn the business, then proceeded to apply himself to it in the
same way that he would come to do with the blues. Valenza worked the
line, saw to purchasing, managed the front of the house. All that
while working steady day jobs elsewhere (with five kids, he and his
wife had a lot of bacon to bring home). One of those jobs took him
to a convention in New Orleans, where he saw a city whose music and
food were inextricable from one another. That was the beginning.
In October 2004 Valenza opened Blues City Deli in the cutest little
corner-storefront you've ever seen, in sleepy Benton Park. Though
Valenza lives in St. Charles, he wanted a city restaurant to match
St. Louis' urban blues heritage. Blues City looks as much like a
museum as it does a sandwich shop. The walls are riddled with
concert posters, blues album covers and photos of blues artists
(including a studio shot of Valenza with Pennsylvania Slim from back
in the day). The menu is pretty much all sandwiches: fourteen of
them, with a house salad, a chef salad and a soup of the day
rounding out the board.
Valenza took many of his ideas from the cities that made the blues
famous. His N'awlins-style muffaletta does the Big Easy proud. It's
Big, for starters, almost as wide as a Frisbee and as thick as a
phone book, served up on a round of sesame seed-topped Italian bread
(this and all other breads come courtesy of Fazio's — good choice!).
Stacked to the rafters with Genoa salami, ham, mortadella, provolone
and mozzarella, the muffaletta may be ordered by the whole or the
half (another good choice).
Like the music that inspires him, Valenza's standout sandwiches make
their mark with a grace note, a nuance, a riff. In the case of the
muffaletta, it's Valenza's handmade olive salad. Pimiento-stuffed
green olives are chopped up into big chunks, then assaulted with
bits of carrots, cauliflower, cocktail onions and pepperoncini. It
truly is more like a salad than a spread, and it has the gumption to
assert itself amid all the muffaletta's meats and cheeses.
Most of the other sandwiches are labeled po'boys. There's a po'boy
stuffed with Memphis-style pulled pork, dripping with wet sauce that
reverberates with Tennessee tang. (Or is it twang?) Valenza says
many customers request it topped with cole slaw, whose crunch and
bite provide textural oomph to the oh-so-tender meat. A Turkey
Supreme po'boy consists of roasted turkey, cheese, lettuce, tomato,
pickle, onion and mayo — plus a layer of crunchy, crackly bacon, the
thrill of the sandwich. A crowd favorite is the Benton Park po'boy,
a classic deli sub that aims to please with smoked ham, roast beef,
turkey and Provel, dressed with lettuce, tomato, pickle, white onion
and pepperoncini, topped with the house dressing, which is basically
Thousand Island with a kick of red pepper.
From Chicago comes the chili dog. Valenza imports his Vienna beef
wieners straight from the Windy City but dubs his dog in honor of
the 1904 World's Fair. Smothered in chili, melted cheese and chopped
onion and served on a soft poppyseed bun, it's a fair facsimile of a
Chitown chili dog. If anything it's a bit too much of a puppy. It
could stand to bare its teeth a bit more, like the Chicago-style hot
Italian beef sandwich does: a sumptuous serving of roasted top round
so drenched in a spiced-up jus that it can bleed through two layers
of wax paper, rocketed into orbit by a layer of blazing-hot
giardiniera peppers (on request, natch).
Valenza acknowledges his Italian heritage with a meatball sub and a
salsiccia sub, both baked hot with marinara and melted cheese. Oh,
the bliss of true Italian sausage, with its onion-studded sweetness
and its pop-in-your-mouth casing. Would that New Orleans native and
Italian icon Louis Prima were still alive — he'd go zooma-zooma for
this sandwich.
Like a drummer who lays down a steady beat for his band, Valenza
nearly always mans the counter at his deli. He's a great counter
man, never jotting down an order without offering some tweaks: Cole
slaw on the pulled pork? Extra pepperoncini on the Benton Park or
none at all? A swap-out of provolone or mozzarella instead of Provel?
He's also more than happy to talk up the pictures on the walls or
the bottled sodas in the cold case (boutique brands like Berghoff
root beer and Green River lemon-lime, plus Coke and Dr Pepper).
Though Valenza doesn't do much advertising, he gets great word of
mouth. Lunch business is brisk, the regulars drawn from the ranks of
St. Louis cops and firefighters, workers at nearby Anheuser-Busch
and downtown nine-to-fivers. Dinner has been nonexistent over the
winter (Blues City Deli abbreviates its hours during the cold
months) but will stage a comeback in April, when Valenza will begin
staying open till 7 p.m. on weeknights.
Go see him. This guy might love the blues, but ain't nothing blue
about his cheerful little sandwich shop. Blues City Deli Benton Park
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Blues City Deli
By Stefanie Ellis
SPECIAL TO THE POST-DISPATCH
09/14/2006
I've always been a messy eater. While it would be a miracle for me
to complete at least one meal a day without spilling part of it on
my clothing, my biggest problem centers around the plate. Try as I
might, food never seems to take a direct route to my mouth. I've
been so consistent about this that family dinners were never
complete without my grandmother predicting my future in a few simple
words: "You'll never get a man to marry you with a plate like that."
Fortunately, marriage has never been as high on my list as the food
whose integrity I inadvertently delight in destroying. I like to
have fun when I eat, though I know when fun is allowed and what
decorum dictates. I prefer to frequent those places where meals are
more interactive and I can find communion among others who share
similar philosophies.
Imagine my delight at witnessing dozens of people at Blues City Deli
eat messy, intricately stacked sandwiches while looking as if they
were enjoying every moment.
I can understand why. The veno ($5.75) - hot roast beef bathed in
jus, topped with bacon, provel cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickle,
onion and a sweet red pepper sauce - was glorious in its super-sized
splendor. The mayonnaise-based sauce was slathered generously on a
mound of smooth-as-silk roast beef, and oozed out the sides of the
thick and wonderfully chewy hoagie roll. The simple toppings allowed
the meat to take a starring role, which it deserved. The turkey
supreme ($5.95) - oven roasted turkey, bacon, provel cheese,
tomatoes, lettuce, pickle, onion and mayo on a hoagie roll - was
also noteworthy. This simple creation stood out from the crowd
because all the proper elements were there: The meat was shaved
thin, piled high and tasted fresh, the bread wasn't too soggy or too
crispy, and the toppings enhanced, rather than detracted from, the
main attraction. Advertisement
At one point, I saw the owner, Vince Valenza, shaving more meat on a
deli slicer, and I knew this guy had a passion for doing things
right. He also has a passion for his customers, which is apparent
the moment you walk through the door. While the food is the main
reason people keep coming back, Vince's interaction with his
customers is perhaps just as important.
This guy loves not only his work but his neighborhood - enough to
name a sandwich for it. The Benton Park ($5.95) - a towering mound
of smoked ham, turkey, roast beef, provel cheese, lettuce, tomatoes,
pickles, onions and pepperoncinis topped with sweet red pepper sauce
- was just as unique as its environs. It was difficult to discern
the flavor of each individual ingredient, but everything worked
together beautifully. The pepperoncinis offered up a slight heat,
and a snappy crunch that gave the sandwich pizzazz. And because of
its size and contents, it was super messy, just the way I like it.
It's true that my grandmother wouldn't approve of my behavior at
Blues City Deli, but I've no doubt she would approve of the place.
There's nothing bad to say about it: not the sandwiches (each could
easily feed two people), the ambiance (live blues is offered on
Fridays and Saturdays) or the service.
If you're in the neighborhood, be sure to stop on by. Tell Vince I
said hello.
Blues City Deli
Address: 2438 McNair Avenue
Phone: 314-773-8225
Hours: 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 11 a.m.-4 p.m.
Friday-Saturday
Smoking: No
Wheelchair access: Yes
Payment method: Visa and MasterCard
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Blues City Deli
By Judith Evans, Of
the Post-Dispatch, 11/24/2004
With
vintage blues on the sound system, Cheerwine among the sodas in the
cooler and its lovingly restored turn-of-the-century storefront
location in Benton Park, Blues City Deli is easy to like and hard to
leave, even with a takeout sack or two in hand.
With its Web site to guide me, I called ahead and ordered lunch. The
menu includes sandwiches, salads and soup, and we decided to try a
taste from each category.
Extra food is never a problem in my office, so I selected three
sandwiches. The "Velenza Special" Muffuletta ($5.95 for half an
8-inch round, $11.75 for a whole) was a delicious version of the New
Orleans classic, a slathering of olive salad plus Genoa salami, ham,
mortadella and mozzarella stacked on seeded bread.
The "Marina" Meatball Po-Boy ($5.95) was big enough for two to
share, with four flavorful, 2-inch meatballs nestled between the
halves of a soft roll. The sandwich had just the right amount of
marinara sauce, providing flavor but not mess. Provel and Parmesan
topped things off.
The Turkey Supreme ($5.95) was another big sandwich, this one with
thin-sliced turkey piled high, then topped with strips of bacon,
slices of provel, shredded lettuce, tomatoes, pickle, onion and a
slathering of mayonnaise.
Bacon also figured in the soup of the day ($2.49), a creamy potato
with cubes of celery and carrots. It was creamy yet light, as
impossible as that may sound.
When we opened the Styrofoam box containing the chef's salad ($3.95
for a small salad, $5.95 for large), our first thought was "ick."
All we saw were pieces of romaine, many of them edged with brown.
Then we realized the box was upside-down. We flipped it and were
rewarded with piles of Genoa salami, ham, pepperoni, shredded provel,
olives, peppers, onions and olives. The few pieces of lettuce that
peeked through looked acceptable, and the creamy Italian dressing,
served on the side, was delicious.
We
washed everything down with sips of Cheerwine, a cherry-flavored
soda, and Hank's Premium Vanilla Cream Soda ($1.50 each, in
old-fashioned glass bottles). Several other boutique-type sodas are
available, along with their mass-market cousins. We also crunched on
a few remarkably fresh and greaseless potato chips with the brand
name "Kitchen Cooked" (99 cents).
Blues City Deli, which opened this fall, is a fine spot for lunch
(eaten in or taken out) and an easy drive from downtown. It is open
from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Saturday.
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I'm in the mood for ... Hot Dogs
JOE BONWICH, Of the
Post-Dispatch, 05/12/2005
Mustard, relish, onions, tomato, pickle, sport pepper, celery salt -
and, if possible, relish in a color that doesn't appear in nature.
Dump 'em all on top and serve yourself up a dog. You'll find some
good ones at:
Blues City Deli, 2438 McNair Avenue (one block south of Gravois
Avenue), Benton Park, 314-773-8225. A charming, relatively new
restaurant in a wonderful historic neighborhood. Sometimes takes a
few extra minutes when they're busy, but worth the wait.
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Blues City Deli grand opening with Brian Curran
The Blues City Deli is at the
corner of Victor and McNair in historic Benton Park. When walking in
to the little south side deli I was instantly greeted by Vince, who
was proudly guarding the counter. Blues music was playing and blues
greats adorned the interior brick wall.
I had the “Valenza Special”
Muffuletta. The players on this massive 8” sandwich are: Genoa
Salami - Ham - Mortadella - Mozzarella - Homemade Olive Salad – all
on Italian bread. To chase it down I enjoyed a chilled bottle, yes
bottle of grape soda. Folks from the hood distant and far came out.
The weather was great, and the eats, well I’ll be back!
Saturday, November 6, 2004 was the grand opening and grand it was.
Brian Curran sat out front with his dobro guitar entertaining the
patrons and neighbors walking by. Brian played a lot, some slide,
and sang a bit. No microphones, no amps, just Brian, his guitar and
a breeze – a terrific combination for a beautiful fall Saturday
afternoon. I was sitting there thinking what a great day it was,
then it got better. I was given a chocolate, chocolate chip cookie,
mmm good. As far as Brian, he sounded great - better live than his
CD’s. Be sure to catch him playing around town. I was amazed at the
sound his dobro was putting out, I was also amazed with the music,
it did not sound like a one-man band.
Jeremy Segel-Moss and Kari Liston of the Bottoms Up Blues Gang were
among the crowd taking in the tunes and enjoying the eats. The Blues
City Deli gets a 5 on the old STLBluesometer. Visit often, tell them
Cornbread sent you.
Ciao’ for now, peace.
Last updated:
Monday, November 24, 2008
