McAlester’s Deli: Proudly adding “very” to “mediocre.”

9700 North Rodney Parham

501-537-4848

You go into a restaurant adjacent to a road with a high traffic count at lunchtime on a Friday, and there are very few people inside. What does that tell you? The obvious: the place sucks. However, my friend and I decided to be charitable and optimistic and give McAlester’s the benefit of the doubt. Result: McAlester’s – 1, Diners – 0.

A place that calls itself a “deli,” even in the South where the word really doesn’t have much meaning, should be able to serve a decent pastrami, corned-beef, and Reuben sandwich. At least, I think it should. My McAlester’s Reuben (after first being served half a sandwich instead of the whole sandwich I had ordered) was so ordinary and unappealing that I was a little stunned. Then, I looked at the kitchen staff, and received an instantaneous Vulcan Mind Meld: “THEY JUST DON'T CARE.”

With my faux “Reuben,” I also got a pickle and potato salad. I told my companion that the latter was the best thing on the plate. She tasted it and said, “That’s the stuff they sell at Sam’s.” Ahh. Hopefully, she was wrong. I mean, they wouldn’t do that, would they? Really, they wouldn’t, right?

I looked over at her plate: soup and a “chicken” baked potato, and cringed before asking her how they were. The “fire-roasted vegetable soup”? With a shrug, “OK.” The “chicken baked potato”? “Old.” Jeez, even the baked potato is bad? I mean, we’re plumbing new depths of mediocrity here at McAlester’s.

Verdict: stay far away from this place. Don’t let anyone talk you into going. I mean, when there are so many consistently mediocre places to eat in the area, why would you want to visit this very mediocre one unless you were truly neurotic? The location might have had its highest and best use when it was the short-lived Hooter’s, and that says a lot.