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5430 Southwest Ave. |
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We happened upon Urzi’s Italian Market after a second failed attempt at going to Gioia’s Deli . We were both in the mood for sandwiches and after driving around for a bit we spied a street that looked promising. Urzi’s is nestled quietly in The Hill across the street from St. Louis’s famed Cunetto’s (which opens at 5 and for which people were lined up outside at 4!). It also sits across the street from a Save-A-Lot, but that is neither here nor there.
Urzi’s has been a St. Louis favorite for almost 60 years and specializes in pre-made Italian foods (pizza dough, fresh bread, etc) and “hard to find” Italian imports (sauces, wine, cookies). Located at the back of the market is a modest deli counter with only 6 things on the menu and all of them are sandwiches. |
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Amy says: |
I ordered the roasted turkey sub with my choice of cheese. I picked provolone. I also got it with a little mayo and ‘everything’ else….tomato, pepperoncini and lettuce. You should know something about me…I’m very picky when it comes to lettuce. I don’t eat iceberg unless that is the only option for the sandwich or in a yummy lettuce wrap from Pei Wei. I would NEVER make a salad out of iceberg and would never order an iceberg salad in a restaurant. All of that said, this being St. Louis, I assumed that this sub would have iceberg and I would be okay with it. What I did not expect was that it had the center of the iceberg. You know the really hard, wrinkly part that does not lay flat? Yep, that was what I got. Anyhow, the sub was placed on a Styrofoam tray and wrapped in plastic wrap….seemed a bit of a waste…why not just use paper? The sub itself tasted okay but lacked any sort of spark. There was one thin slice of tomato and a few pepperoncini and the iceberg lump. I could have gotten a better one from my local subway but then I would not have supported a local business. In my opinion, Urzi’s appeared to be a really cool Italian market with about everything Italian that you could have imagined and I will shop there for cheese, spices, sauce, wine and coffee but I will pass on the subs in the future. |
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Tony says: |
I ordered the “Rich Boy” sub: Roast Beef, Ham, Swiss, mayo, mustard…plus the Pepper cheese I added. And it was…okay. Now before go into anything else, I want to say that I think that Urzi’s Market is a market that happens to sell sandwiches–not the other way around. So, perhaps it’s unfair to judge them based solely on their sandwich prowess (although LeGrand’s Market doesn’t seem to struggle in this area). That said, I must repeat my earlier sentiment….the sandwich was okay. The bread (crusty Italian) served it’s purpose of being the outside of the sandwich, but not much else. The meat, I will say, was pretty good. It wasn’t processed, pressed meat (like that at Subway) , but again pretty plain. I’m not really sure what I was expecting, but I really think I was looking for more. To be fair, it’s not like Urzi’s is guilty of false advertising (nowhere did it say Urzi’s Sandwich Deli) and perhaps there are more people in the world who are looking for “plain and ordinary” things they can count on than there are people looking something out of the ordinary. After all, a sandwich is just a sandwich, right?
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Does it suck? |
Urzi’s Italian Market is the type of place that, if you lived in the neighborhood, would be great to grab a decent sandwich on your way to work or on the way to a picnic at one of the area’s many parks. This is not the type of place that you would drive out of your way to get to. What Urzi’s seems to excel at is offering a niche market of import and specialty items (we picked up prosciutto, mozzarella, a pizza sauce we’d never heard of, and cherry tomato basil sauce) that you might not otherwise be able to get at your local supermarket. That said… the sandwiches?…we could both leave ‘em. |
