Nosh – Guilderland, NY

I love kosher style delis.

Let me back up. I like places where I can get enormous corned beef and pastrami sandwiches. It’s unfair to compare things to Carnegie Deli or Katz Deli (the latter of which I think is a tad overrated), but it’s natural when a place pops up doing the same types of stuff those places do.

Recently, a place called Nosh popped up just a few miles from home and work at 1645 Western Ave right across the street from the Side Door Cafe; the location was formerly a Wendy’s, and that’s pretty obvious from the shape of the building. That said, it’s cool to see places take over fast food buildings. All of the signage and decor outside of the building is very red, black, and white, so it was hypnotically summoning me in a big way.

It’s easy for me to get overwhelmed at a place like this, because I really want everything on the menu. While I sipped on a Brooklyn Egg Cream made with Fox’s U-bet chocolate syrup($3.25), I tried to figure out what to order.

I decided that I wanted to try a potato knish ($2.49) and a triple decker sandwich that had both hot pastrami and corned beef, The Elliot (hot pastrami and corned beef with swiss, cole slaw, and Russian dressing – $11.95). The waitress upsold me on a pastrami and cheddar cheese knish which she said was much better and was only $0.50 more. Ok, I bit.

The knish wasn’t bad. It was nice and warm and had a good texture. The pastrami and cheese in it was very flavorful, but the potatoes were a bit underseasoned.

It took a few minutes for the sandwich to arrive. The size was definitely impressive, and I couldn’t wait to dig in when I saw it. I picked it up, started eating, and, to my surprise, the pastrami and corned beef were barely warm. I had to talk to the waitress about this because I thought the sandwich was supposed to be hot.

So I asked, “isn’t the meat supposed to be hot?”

She replied, “Why?”

I said, “because this is barely warm.”

Her – “Yeah it’s supposed to be pretty hot.” Then she shrugged and said, “I guess I’ll let them know.”

I didn’t hear anything for a few minutes, and she didn’t take the plate, so I figured I might as well keep eating.

There was a small cup of potato salad that I chose on the side. Because of the mayonnaise, it was creamy, but the potatoes were a bit gritty.

There was also a pickle on the plate. It was a half sour. It was not bad.

The waitress came back and told me she let them know in the kitchen and that she was really sorry about that. That was my cue to keep eating the sandwich; they weren’t going to fix it. The pastrami was really good; I definitely liked it. The corned beef was tasty, but because of the temperature, it was very tough and leathery. The Russian dressing was actually really awesome. The slaw on the top layer was also pretty good, and the bread was solid. Everything was there for this to be epic, it just fell a bit short.

While I was sitting there, I had a few minutes to take in the surroundings. I had to listen to one old dude give a waitress a lesson on why it’s important that chairs be properly upholstered and another old dude offer the baking services of his wife to the owner when he heard they were charging $2 for a chocolate chip cookie. Stuff like that is just priceless and not annoying at all!

My bill came to $20.19; apparently, the special knish was actually $3.99 which is a buck higher than the waitress said the upcharge would be. She was apologetic about this when she realized; still, no offer to do anything about the mistake.

I guess they’re still working things out. They have some pretty decent stuff there, and it’s definitely nice to have this style of a deli around.