DAVID NELSON/ ON RESTAURANTS : Poor Service Puts Damper on SamSon’s Experience

It wasn’t really necessary to spend six months sampling the possibilities of the new SamSon’s in downtown San Diego’s Koll Center, but the experience did have its rewards.

This delicatessen-restaurant’s nearly endless menu did not require tasting after tasting to get a handle on the cuisine, which verges on the average. Nor were repeated dalliances with the chopped liver, the borscht and the hot pastrami sandwiches all that diverting, although a couple of sojourns with the corned beef hash did develop into idyllic noons.

What really stretched out the time required to consider SamSon’s was the service. At the first visit, it was so appalling as to seem a one-time-only aberration. But over time, the supposed exception revealed itself as the rule, and it became something of a game to wait for the appearance of a server who could count past 10 without removing a shoe.

One time a server took an hour to bring a corned beef sandwich (could it have been that the meat was corned to order?) and then brought back change for a $10 bill rather than the $20 she had been given. When reproached, the server responded, “I knew you gave me a twenty, I just wanted to see if you’d notice.” Indeed.

Another server proposed mayonnaise as a necessary adjunct to hot pastrami, a suggestion that in New York would be tantamount to commenting adversely on someone’s mother. Other servers, over the months, struggled with other concepts of the delicatessen trade, such as bringing coffee with the lunch rather than after it. Even the fulfillment of simple requests for water required intricate negotiations worthy of a partnership of Philadelphia lawyers.

Many of these experiences took place in a restaurant that was far from full. In fairness, there does seem to have been some improvement in the service of late.

Anyone who likes delicatessen food at all--and traditional delis themselves, for that matter--tends to like it much. It is the food of Broadway, and if not quite the stuff that dreams are made on, at least the stuff that Rodgers and Hammerstein could have worked into a memorable melody. And SamSon’s has just about the entire repertoire listed on its menu, a near twin to the list at the original SamSon’s in La Jolla Village Square. (Both are owned by Steve Wilson, who obliquely named the restaurants for himself: He is Sam’s son.)

The new place occupies the airy ground floor of the Koll Center and benefits from the cool, contemporary marble and glass surroundings; the soaring ceiling and sense of space are pleasantly different than the original SamSon’s, which offers close quarters and is decorated with dozens of vintage movie posters.

The menu opens with fresh orange juice and closes, six closely printed pages later, with a choice of cookies that includes raisin, chocolate chip and rugulach. In between are an immense selection of breakfast offerings (available all day), from basic egg preparations to such classics as blintzes, matzo brei (matzo bread and eggs fried together) and French toast made with thickly sliced challah bread. There are knishes, lox and whitefish platters, kreplach, stuffed kishka, noodle kugel (this really could be set to music), potato pancakes, matzo ball soup and even chili. There are herb teas, lemonade, ice cream sodas, smoothies, Chicago phosphates, New York egg creams and Detroit’s own Dr. Brown’s soda (regular or diet, no less). There are 87 sandwiches, if the 15 hamburger variations are included, and entree choices include baked short ribs, chicken-in-the-pot, stuffed cabbage rolls and even that one-time mainstay, franks and beans. Obviously, selection is not a problem.

The food could be better. The blintzes, if immense and bursting with filling, were pedestrian, and what is a blintz without finesse? A stuffed pancake. A guest with considerable experience in the area of matzo ball soup found the chicken broth unconvincing and the matzo ball tough, which made it a rare matzo ball, indeed. The club sandwich--and it’s difficult to find a good club these days--was rather good and certainly generous in its components, although the bacon gave evidence of having been cooked some time earlier. (If you can find a place that assembles club sandwiches with cooked-to-order bacon, by all means order one.) The potato salad varies, but often includes chewy lengths of green onion tops that probably could serve some other function more successfully.

It may be reasonable to judge a delicatessen on the basis of its corned beef and hot pastrami sandwiches. Numerous experiences with these two sandwiches at SamSon’s were largely unsatisfactory. Pastrami generally is more appealing than corned beef, but at SamSon’s it can be rather fatty, while lean corned beef always is available. Both were rarely served hot, even though the menu promises that condition, and the rye bread tended always to be dry, when ideally it should be moistened with a bit of meat juice. The dryness again pointed to meat sitting on a counter rather than reposing in hot liquid on a steam table.

And while both these meats always should be sliced at maximum thinness, they sometimes were rather thick, a quality that deprives a high-stacked sandwich--as these always are--of much of its peculiar savor.

SamSon’s unquestionably serves quantity, however, and many sandwiches are available in both a generous regular size and an extra-large version at modest additional cost. Specialty sandwich offerings include the old Long Island favorite of roast beef topped with cole slaw, a rather good Reuben and the amusingly named “Leitner Strikes Out,” or turkey, avocado and Swiss cheese layered on sourdough bread.

t SamSon’s

501 W. Broadway, San Diego

232-2340

Lunch and dinner daily

Extensive delicatessen menu with varying prices; sandwiches range from $5.50 to $7.95

Credit cards accepted