The Cuz — it also goes by the New Yorker. Photo by Robert.
My girlfriend wanted deli. We found this place online, figured we’d give it a try, and ordered across both halves of the menu.
Also this week: 10 things to do in Pasco County, Sept. 8–13.
Little Road runs the length of west Pasco, and it is mostly chains, strip plazas and drive-thrus. A counter slicing its own pastrami is not what that corridor is known for. It’s the reason people around here who want a proper deli sandwich tend to point the car toward Tampa or drop down into Pinellas to get one.
You don’t have to. There’s one at 9822 Little Road.
Rye Street Deli & Dogs prints its motto right on the menu — “Stacked High. Melted on Rye.” — and the name tells you the rest. It’s a deli and it’s a hot dog counter. It isn’t a restaurant that also happens to make sandwiches, which is a different thing entirely and usually a worse one.
Hers was the pastrami and Swiss on rye, and it was true to the slogan. Nobody reinvented it. There was no house twist, no aioli, no third cheese nobody asked for. Just the sandwich, built properly, with mustard carrying enough bite to cut through the fat — which is the entire job mustard has on that plate.
Mine was the kielbasa with onions and peppers, and it had the snap. That’s the whole test. A natural casing gives you that resistance and then the give, and nothing fakes it — not a skinless sausage, not one that’s been holding on a warmer. This one was cooked right, and getting it right is more of a skill than it gets credit for.
The staff were genuinely friendly. The dining room was clean. Neither of those should be worth mentioning and both of them constantly are.
What makes it worth the drive is the gap it fills. Pasco has no shortage of places to get a sub. It has very few doing cured meat and natural casing as the main event, and fewer still on this stretch of road. That’s a real hole in the county and this fills it.
Give it a try.
Good to know
Rye Street Deli & Dogs
9822 Little Road, New Port Richey, FL 34654
727-861-7575
Online ordering: RyeStreetDeli.com
Hours weren’t posted anywhere we could confirm as of this writing, so it’s worth a call before making a trip of it.
Know a place we should try? If you know a family-owned restaurant or business in Pasco County deserving a visit from us or our readers, let us know.
Nobody paid for this post and nothing was comped. We ate there, we paid the bill, we liked it, and we wrote about it.