Now please, don't get me wrong. They have great bagels. Don't know if they make them in-house or have them delivered daily. They make a good egg sandwich too, and the coffee is decent. My issue is when ordering any deli sandwich, wrap, or panini. Every time I order a deli sandwich, it is made poorly. For example: I ordered a Grilled Caesar Salad Wrap today. I also order a turkey and provolone sandwich with "just a little bit" of mayo, on a roll for Aimee. Now...in the process of making the sandwiches, one of the workers stated they are out of the black olives that go into the Caesar Salad wrap. From my experience, there are no black olives in Caesar Salad, so I am not sure why they would add them in the wrap. I told them to not worry about that and make it sans olives. Now I stepped away from watching them work to pick out a bottle of iced tea. When I came back to the counter, it was ready to go. I took my purchase and went home.
When I sat down and opened my sandwich, I noticed a few things. After my first bite, I realized they they did not put thought into how the sandwich was made. My first issue is that the person making this wrap did not bother tossing the lettuce with the dressing, like how a caesar salad is traditionally made. That simple misstep was the biggest mistake of the sandwich. One bite had too much cheese and little-to-no dressing. The next bite was just dry lettuce. It was a poorly made sandwich. My wife's sandwich had issues also. It was a simple sandwich. Turkey, Provolone, a little bit of mayo. Aimee doesn't like mayo that much, but needs something to moisten the sandwich a bit or it makes her feel sick. They put on so much mayonnaise the roll was soggy. Aimee was not happy at all with the sandwich. In fact, neither of us ate. It was just an all around bad experience.
Now a while back, I ordered a panini there as a to-go order. I live almost across the street from this place so it's convenient. When I arrived home and opened the wrapped sandwich, I realized that the bread was toasted and had grill marks, but the sandwich was cold in the middle. The cheese was not melted. I had to heat it in pan at home to get it cooked correctly. An unpleasant experience to say the least.
My main point is that if you own a business, especially a restaurant or deli, you should put some thought into how your prepare your goods. It seems as if the workers are either not trained on how to construct their sandwiches, or they are trained poorly on how to construct a good wrap. If you are making a caesar wrap, you can at least toss the lettuce before wrapping. Also, use the right lettuce for a caesar salad wrap. Romaine is the traditional type of lettuce for a caesar salad. They used mixed greens for the wrap. By doing this, it was missing the crunch it needed. Finally, they used finely grated Parmesan cheese. If they would of grated it differently, it would not have a powdery taste. It just upsets me that some restaurants overlook some of the small things that make a big difference.
Ok....I am off of my soapbox and I put it away for now. I will still go to Carmel Bagel Deli....ious. I will now limit my purchases to bagels and egg sandwiches only. I believe in supporting our local businesses and will still do that. I just hope that they will strive to improve the way they do things. If they just put more thought and consideration in that they do, I am betting they would have many more happy, returning customers.
Aimee: All I have to say is I'm very disappointed. This is a great place for bagels with mediocre hit/miss service from a bunch of teenage boys. This was my first time ordering an actual deli sandwich from Carmel Bagel Deli...licious and when someone says "just a little mayo" the obvious next step is NOT to schmear half a jar of mayonaise onto the bread so it gets so soggy it splits and is oozing everywhere. Gross, white, mess. Three sad and sorry descriptive words that you wouldn't want the sandwich you just sold less than 5 minutes earlier to be described as. Now, I'm a hypocrite because I told Kevin to go back and get his $15. But I know I wouldn't have. I probably would have done something childish, like toss my sandwich at their front door and let the mayo-mess slide down the front so the rest of their patrons could be left wondering why. But I'm vengeful like that. *LOL* Kevin was angry and said that he's gone back because of something else once before and there was a middle-aged woman in there who argued & was short with him. Note to business owners: In this day and age when business is not what it used to be, don't give your few (now formerly-dedicated) customers an attitude when you can't make a sandwich correctly, or when they ask you to do something a certain way. Isn't that your job? Isn't that what you get paid to do? Maybe you are having a bad day. Maybe business is not going well and you haven't seen a raise in several years. All I have to say to that is JOIN THE CLUB and get over yourself. This is the way of the world. No one can afford crappy service or shoddy product. Don't be there to screw up business for someone else! Hell, we can go to McDonalds and get a wrap, it may not be very healthy, but it would be RIGHT and served with a smile. What really irritates me is that Kevin and I were going to go down there in the late afternoon to cover the Putnam County Cash Mob and post it to our Foodies 101 Lohud.com food blog to give Bagel Deli...licious a little positive free press! I wasn't feeling up to it so we decided to support them anyway by getting lunch there. Makes me wonder what would have happened if all 20-30 Cash Mobbers got bad sandwiches? Either way, I'm glad I didn't waste my time and go down there to cover the Cash Mob because I would have had nothing nice to say. On our Lohud.com blog, we don't like to leave disparaging blog posts. On our own blog.. we do what we want. :)
...I don't even need my soap box!
