New York State of Mind at Gandolfo's - CLOSED

Gandolfo's New York Delicatessen

23981 Alicia Pkwy., Ste. 120

Mission Viejo, CA 92691

I drive past Gandolfo's just about every time I leave my house. It opened last year, and I just recently made it in to give it a try. Gandolfo's is a chain that was begun in Utah of all places. I know what you are thinking, "Deli sandwiches from Utah?". According to their web site, the founder of Gandolfo's was a New York native and lamented the fact that he could not find a good deli sandwich in Provo, so he decided to open up a shop. 45 shops later in 14 states, let's see if he has succeeded in his quest to provide quality New York sandwiches west of the Mississippi.

When we visited on a recent Wednesday night, we were one of a handful of people that came through the door. The place is decorated with the obligatory New York sports teams posters, and NY street signs. They do keep the place clean though, the workers were pretty busy wiping things down on our visit.

Here were our two sides that we tried. The pasta salad was pretty good as far as pasta salads go. It had a nice mild flavor, and I liked the whole pieces of broccoli in this salad. The red potato salad was good as well. It had a decent flavor with a hint of dill.

At Gandolfo's, they have over fifty sandwiches to choose from. Above is Katie's pick, the Rockefeller Rueben. She chose turkey to go along with the Swiss, sauerkraut, and spicy mustard. This sandwich comes on rye. I thought that this sandwich was good but boring, It would have been better if she would have gone with corned beef or pastrami. She liked it though and really thought the bread was great.

Next up was the Gandy's Coney Island Dog. Their hot dogs are made by Nathan's and served on a hero roll. The Coney Island dog comes with kraut, onions and spicy mustard. They definitely did not skimp on the toppings. There was a lot of kraut on this dog, and the taste was really good. A little steep at $3.69, but you pay that same price at the ballpark, for an inferior dog, so it really is a decent deal.

After much debate, I decided on the Carnegie Hall sandwich. Corned beef, turkey, swiss, coleslaw, and Russian dressing, all on rye. This sandwich was as good as it looks. With all of the stuff on it, I thought it was going to make the bread soggy, but the bread stood up. At $7.89, again you think that this might be too much for this sandwich, but now that Subway is done with their five dollar sub deal, and this is not a sandwich you can get from Subway, it makes this sandwich very worth the money.


So in review, I really liked Gandolfo's. I think that they succeeded in making a good New York sandwich. They will definitely make it into my sandwich cycle. With 50 different sandwiches to choose from, they have the variety to keep me coming back.

So out of five subways, five being best to zero being worst, Gandolfo's gets three solid subways.

For more information on Gandolfo's check them out here: http://www.gandolfosdeli.com/