Las Vegas Weekly

New deli alert!

Eddie D’s brings must-have meatball subs to the Northwest

When people know you write about restaurants, they let you know when there’s a new restaurant worth checking out. When you’ve got family that loves to eat as much you do, expect extra notification. There’s a new deli in our old neighborhood, my brother says, and “they make their own pastrami.”

I don’t know where big bro came up with that, because the month-old Eddie D’s Famous Italian Sandwiches actually buys its pastrami, hot sopressata, shiny and buttery prosciutto and other great meats and cheeses from Thumann’s, a 50-year-old Jersey-based purveyor. But Eddie’s does make its own meatballs, slightly spicy beef-and-pork masterpieces swimming in homemade marinara inside sub sandwiches or piled atop pasta.

Vegas is lacking in great delicatessens, so Eddie D’s is a welcome arrival. Here you can munch great sandwiches named after Sopranos characters (the Pauly Walnuts has that prosciutto, sharp provolone, sweet capicola and Genoa salami), build your own cold sandwich with goodies from the deli case or keep it hot with chicken parm, Italian roast beef or Philly cheesesteak. The signature hard rolls have a great texture, more of an animalistic tear-with-your-teeth than a civilized bite, or you can get your sandwich on a soft roll, white bread, wheat or rye. Take advantage of the slider menu and mix and match three different mini-sandwiches, choosing from those big, juicy meatballs, sausage, roast beef or roast pork.

If you get to talking with owners Eddie or Shirley, they won’t let up. They’ll run through the complete menu, remind you a pound of meat or cheese to take home is a buck off and ask if they can switch the channel on the flat-screen to your favorite show. Treating everybody like a regular is the kind of service we want in our neighborhood deli, and now we’ve got it. Plus meatballs.