Critic's Review
Review 6/28/2018
Thursday is the only day they have pastrami at Blue Willy's for some reason, so I waited until I was free on a Thursday to try it out. I've had his ribs and beans and brisket and I was never impressed enough to go out of my way for that stuff.
Willy was in a little dump with bad parking in Pompano the last time I tried his stuff; now he's in an old Burger king that he's shelled out to provide minimal seating for his guests. The plastic fast food signs have been replaced by a blackboard and the front area is a drab as you could possibly imagine. They still have a temporary sign after being open for well over a year.
I ordered a pastrami sandwich; you can't order it any other way except by the pound, and at $18.99 a pound I didnt want to chance that I wouldn't like it. You can get it with cole slaw on the sandwich but they won't give you the cole slaw on the side, so how am I supposed to know if the cole slaw will ruin the sandwich? I had to pass on the slaw.
The dining room is a joke; random tables is a very unattractive room. They should have just left the plastic fast food seats as the previous tenant, Pollo Granjero did.
No sides, $13.77 for a sandwich. They did give me the mustard on the side. Way more mustard than you can use on 5 sandwiches.
My first impression was that the cheap supermarket rye bread wasn't sturdy enough for thick cut, smokehouse pastrami.
This stuff is not like deli pastrami; this is more Katz than Carnegie. If you don't know, Pastrami is a corned beef (a cured, brined brisket), which is coated with black pepper and coriander (and other spices) and heavily smoked.
This was some pretty nice looking pastrami.
The mustard provided was good stuff; I'll make use of the extra for sure. The pastrami itself deserves 4.5 stars; it wasn't quite fatty enough. What I didn't like is that the crust had way too many seed or peppercorn husks; while I applaud them grinding the rub in house, you have to sift out the husks. Nobody wants to bite into a husk, nor does anyone want to have to pick them out of their mouth while their eating a sandwich.
The other issue was the bread; this bread simply wasn't sturdy enough for this meat; keeping it together as a sandwich was a bit of a chore.
Conclusion
While the ball cap crowd raves about Blue Willy's, I've never been a huge fan. The pastrami is very good, but if you're used to the thin-sliced deli stuff you might not expect what you get here. This is thick sliced, heavily smoked smokehouse pastrami. Make sure you get the mustard.
They say "while it lasts", so once they run out you'll have to wait another week to get it. I got here at 2:45 and they still had it, so you're probably pretty safe for lunch.
I liked the Smoke BBQ version better, and they have it every day (also "while it lasts")