2 December 2006
501 Connecticut Street
San Francisco, CA

Jonathan
Atmosphere: Perhaps it was simply because we knew it was closing in a matter of weeks, but it felt kinda depressing in this tiny yet charming corner cafe that called itself a deli. Maybe the neighborhood was a little too bougie for me, but it just didn’t feel like a deli. You call that a deli counter? I call it a liquor store excuse for a deli counter. Strangely enough, if it had been “just” a neighborhood corner cafe, with decent sandwiches served by a friendly (or mean and entertaining) staff, I might have liked it. It’s the pretense of deli-dom that I find objectionable.
Attitude: None. Which makes perfect sense for a charming neighborhood corner cafe.
Food [general]: Horrible. Egg salad was great, if you like mayo and bread straight up. If you actually like egg salad, though, it was disgusting. Drippy. Runny. Two words that accurately describe this accident between two slices of bread. And yet, the slices of bread themselves? Delightfully fresh and soft rye. Go figure.
Pickles: Mmmmmmmm…Vlasic. Jarred pickles at their finest.
Dr. Brown’s black cherry: Nope. And yet the Stewart’s brand black cherry wasn’t too bad. Made sense, though, that they wouldn’t even know to stock the Dr. Brown’s.
Summary: Devastating loss to the Jewish deli community, the closing of Klein’s. Thank goodness you can still sample their delightful fare at two San Francisco airport locations. No joke. Starting to feel like a broken record here, but it makes perfect sense to me that a purported Jewish deli like Klein’s can find success at an airport, but not in a community storefront.