Tat's East Coast Delicatessen in Seattle

Probably the easiest way to locate New York food in your area is to find restaurants who use New York vernacular that is descriptive of New York in the title. For example you might find a restaurant called New York Pizza or Gotham Subs. You know what I am talking about. I am sure just like me you have veered off a highway going ninety miles an hour just because you saw a sign for some sort of New York food. And that my friends is what led me straight to Tat's East Coast Delicatessen.

Now lets focus for a second on the particular vernacular used in this case ... "East Coast". Now anybody who is from New York knows that "East Coast" in general is used to describe a place that is like New York, perhaps close to New York and whose foods are similar, but yet is not New York. These "East Coast" places like Philadelphia and Boston have some great food of their own and they have some foods that are about as close to New York style as you can get but when push comes to shove they are really just distant cousins or faraway suburb of New York. And so it goes without saying the "East Coast" title always raises a slight red flag.

So now that I offended a good deal of people (like any good New Yorker should) lets get back to the task at hand. Tat's Deli is owned an operated by two gentleman who grew up in Philadelphia and New Jersey (i.e "East Coast") who missed their hometown foods. So they decided to open up a restaurant that would serve their favorite foods in Seattle.

The word Delicatessen is a little misleading in that Tat's is really more of sub shop. Somewhere between a local pizza place serving Chicken Parmesan subs and an Italian or Kosher Deli offering sandwiches with various cold cuts. Their real claim to fame are their cheese steaks. Now I love a great cheese steak but cheese steaks are a Philadelphia thing so I will leave the cheese steak review for the guy who writes the phillyfoodanywhere blog!

I was here to try the classic New York favorite a chicken Parmesan sandwich. I have quite a few things to say about this sandwich so lets take the bullet list approach

What I loved:

• When I asked if the chicken was breaded the person taking my order gave me the "are you crazy" look and said "of course".
• When I asked if there was going to be lettuce, tomatoes, mayo or any other non-authentic ingredient on my sandwich he gave me the "are you crazy" look and said "of course NOT".
• The bread was excellent and when I got my sandwich the bread was toasted but still chewy just the way it is supposed to be.

What was ok or not so good:

• I found the sauce to be somewhat flavorless.
• The chicken was fairly soggy (I will add that to this day I have no idea how somebody makes one of these sandwiched and keeps the chicken cutlets crispy ... but some are able to).
• The chicken looked and tasted like some of those frozen breaded chicken cutlets.

So to sum it up I think this Chicken Parmesan sandwich was a solid B+. The essence of the sandwich was there but I think they could execute a little better on some of the fundamental components of the sandwich. All that said I would say for sure this is the best Chicken Parmesan sandwich I have found to date in the Seattle area so I encourage you to give it a try.

As for the rest of the menu, there looks like there are some interesting and tasty meals to be had . Like I said earlier this isn't a true delicatessen in the sense that you can go have any sandwich you desire created but they do have a bunch of great sounding sandwiches on the menu. options that I hope to try one day include Tat's Italian, Hot Pastrami, and the Reuben. I will let you know when I have given them a try. In the mean time you can find more information about Tat's East Coast Delicatessen below.

Tat's East Coat Delicatessen Menu

Giovanni's Pizza - New York Pizza in Sunnyvale, California (San Francisco area)

So you just moved to a new town and your first call of duty is to find a good slice of pizza. You search the web for local places that claim to have New York pizza, you read reviews, and finally you pick a location. You get in your car and drive with misguided hopes that your taste buds will soon be delighted by the flavors of a good slice of pizza. Yet when you arrive and start to eat the all to familiar feeling of disappointment sets in.

If you are anything like me this has happened to you countless times. But every once in a while you stumble across a gem. Perhaps you weren't even really looking this time and just walked into the first place you passed that said pizza. I can still remember the first time that happened to me and it was at Giovanni's pizza in Sunnyvale, California.

The first time I visited Giovanni's I was living and working in the south San Francisco bay area. Giovanni's was located in a nondescript shopping mall on Lawrence expressway not too far from where I worked. I wasn't really looking for great pizza that day, just something to eat. When I walked in Giovanni's the first thing that struck me was the amount of people waiting for lunch. Apparently I had stumbled on a very popular lunch place for the computer geek crowd of silicon valley. There were a few give away's early on that I had found a gem. You could buy a slice, they had all the heroes (subs) I grew up with including my favorite chicken parmesan hero, they had a baker's pride oven (a standard of most New York pizza places) and finally was a newspaper clipping on the wall that indicated the the owner also had locations in the New York suburbs.

When I finally tasted my first slice I was blown away because for the first time in my life I tasted pizza outside of New York that actually tasted like New York pizza. I am not going to tell you it was the best pizza I ever had but this restaurant performed something I had never seen. It created a slice of pizza that would hold it's own against any New York location. In follow-up visits I was equally impressed with their chicken parmesan sub and Sicilian slices (another type of pizza found mostly in New York). Best of all Giovanni's had the atmosphere of a New York pizza place. It is the type of place you could go in everyday and get a slice. The guys behind the counter know your name and you always feel welcome.

Purely from a sociological point of view there are some interesting things I have noticed about Giovanni's and the Silicon Valley crowd. During weekday lunch this is probably one of the busiest restaurants in the bay area. The restaurant is large, occupying what was once two store fronts, and you will still wait to be seated. Yet if you go to Giovanni's at any other time (e.g. any night or weekend) you will find almost nobody there. I find this to be an interesting conundrum for the potential success of New York food elsewhere in the country or world. On one hand the sheer numbers of people eating lunch at this place indicate it is a huge success and that people obviously like the food and the style with which it is served (i.e. the slice). However the fact that you can hear crickets in the evening indicates there is something about the cultures of other parts of this country that prevent people from going to a place like this at other times. I am not sure why that is but is a cause of concern for me since this could impact the number of restaurants who can open a New York food establishment outside New York and survive.

Anyway the real reason I am writing about Giovanni's is that I had the chance to go back to the Bay area this past weekend and went to visit my old haunt with two buddies who grew up with me in New York. Things have not changed at all. The place is still packed on weekday lunches and empty on weekends. The food is still awesome. Even my friends who like me are a skeptical bunch were pretty blown away by how good the slices were. And I indulged myself in a chicken parmesan that made my taste buds tingle

So if you find yourself anywhere in San Francisco or the general bay area and you are looking for a good slice of pizza or a chicken parmesan hero I implore you to make the drive to Giovanni's. It will be the best move you will ever make. And if it seems like a far drive for you I will leave you with this fact. At least once a month for several years I made the approximately 30 mile drive from San Francisco to Giovanni's just to get a slice and chicken parmesan. That is how good it is. For more information check out the maps and links below

Giovanni's on Citysearch