Review of 491 DELI
by T Hill
on 7/12/2012
I agree with the previous posts. My first visit up to the 491 deli we ordered sandwiches for a meeting. One was called the Big Dave... it was very ordinary. Nothing special. It looked like a sandwich I could have made in my kitchen. We also ordered a Rueban sandwich and instead of thousand island dressing he used yellow mustard. It was nasty. I also ordered a gyro. I asked him what kind of gyro meet he used and he said it was special order meet that comes in a block that he gets from a Greek food distributor. He lied!!! It was made from a gyro kit that you can buy at the grocery store. It was not "kick ass" like he described to me.
The owner is hard to describe. I would say he is somewhat socially inept. He talks down to his employees. Which are all high school females. He acts like he's doing you a favor when he's making your order. He talks and acts like he's from a big city but you can tell he's not. I took my son there for ice cream. Which was good. But it's hard to mess up a scoop of ice cream from a blue bell bucket. The Owner was still being very rude to his employees in front of the customers. There was an attractive lady there with her teenage daughter sitting near our table and he kept coming over to their table and talking to them about his divorce and crazy ex-wife and all kinds of things that seemed inappropriate. He then like the previous post stated started trying to get the lady's daughter to work for him. He took them through his kitchen and to the back. Shortly after the lady seemed irritated and left swiftly. As they were leaving he followed them out to the door and was yelling to the teenage girl that she has a job there if she wants it.
My Sister was there with her kids to get ice cream and she over heard him telling his employees that the only reason these teenage boys come in there is because they are staring at their breasts and that they need to cover them up because it's a distraction. This is believable because he only has one volume and it's obnoxiously LOUD! She also heard him tell the girl to open the cash register and count down the drawer and after she told him the amount out loud he said "we made a shit load!" I have also heard others around the neighborhood share similar stories. It is very frustrating to get a new deli in Lakewood and this be the result.
If you like mediocre food that you could make yourself at an inflated rate then this is the place for you! If you like to eat off of Styrofoam plates with plastic silverware that he reuses by the way is then this is the place for you! I have never written a review before and wouldn't take the time to do so but this guy really rubbed me the wrong way. My honest first impression of the 491 deli is that it is the equivalent to a developmentally delayed adult running a lemonade stand.
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Comments for this review
Elisa Breitenbach on 12/6/2013
Did you know this place is no longer open? Someone said he is going to pop up in downtown Lees Summit Mo. Good Luck Lees Summit if you keep Dave Kemp and his long line of Pop Up Restaurants.