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.
The kielbasa and the pastrami were our order, but the menu runs a lot wider than that one visit covered. The hot side, all grilled on marble rye, starts at $9.99 for a grilled cheese and runs up through a Reuben — lean or fatty corned beef, built in 6- or 9-ounce sizes — at $15.99 to $20.99, a patty melt at $16.99, and what they call The Stack, hot corned beef and pastrami together, at $18.49. The cold sandwiches run cheaper: turkey and cheese or ham and cheese start at $11.99, pastrami and Swiss at $14.99. On the dog side, a Texas Dog runs $7.49 to $8.99, and there’s a $6.99 kids’ hot dog meal if you’re bringing the family.
We’re not the only ones who left impressed. One reviewer online called their Reuben “might be my favorite Reuben I’ve ever had” — after ours, that’s not a stretch.
What makes it worth the drive is the gap it fills. Pasco has no shortage of places to get a sub — our own hot dogs roundup for New Port Richey runs heavier on carts and chili dogs than deli work like this. Very few places here are 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.
Also nearby: where to get your morning fix before the rest of New Port Richey wakes up, and downtown New Port Richey’s dine-out scene.
Good to know
Rye Street Deli & Dogs
9822 Little Road, New Port Richey, FL 34654
727-861-7575
Online ordering: RyeStreetDeli.com
Open 11am–8:45pm Monday through Saturday, and 11am–7:45pm on Sunday, confirmed directly off their own site as of this writing.
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.