Every city needs a place where you can order hot pastrami, a bowl of matzo ball soup and a chicken-fried steak with cream gravy at the same table, and nobody blinks. In Dallas, that place is Cindi’s NY Deli.
Cindi’s calls itself one part New York neighborhood deli, one part 1950s coffee and pancake house and one part Southern mom-and-pop diner. That describes the menu, and it describes the woman behind it.
Anh Vo fled Vietnam in the 1970s with her husband, Hong, and their 19-day-old baby on a small boat. They arrived in the United States with almost nothing and no English. After a string of jobs, they bought a small restaurant on Harry Hines Boulevard. Vo had never really learned to cook in Vietnam, so her first lessons came from her own cook, and the first dishes she mastered were chicken-fried steak and Southern home cooking.
Then a popular deli on Central Expressway called Cindy’s closed. Plenty of people wanted the space, but the landlord, Frederick Brodsky, gave the lease to Vo after visiting her little place on Harry Hines. She changed the spelling to Cindi’s, added to the menu and won over the regulars. More than three decades later she runs four locations, and the restaurant still publicly thanks Brodsky for taking a chance on her. Ask Vo how a Vietnamese refugee ended up owning a New York deli and she has a ready answer: “Only in America.”
The deli side of the menu is the reason to go. Hot pastrami and hot corned beef come stacked on rye, and the New York Reuben is grilled with sauerkraut and Swiss. For something more old-school, order the corned beef, pastrami, chopped liver and Bermuda onion combo, the sandwich your grandfather would have ordered. Kosher salami and a Hebrew National hot dog with sauerkraut round out the list.
The soups earn their keep on a cold day. Get the matzo ball soup, the chicken soup with kreplach, meat-filled dumplings that are the Jewish deli’s answer to wontons, or Cindi’s Combo Bowl, with a matzo ball, kreplach, rice and noodles. Add a potato knish.
Breakfast runs all day, and it’s where the three sides of the menu meet. There are cheese blintzes with blueberry or strawberry preserves, latkes with applesauce and sour cream, lox and eggs and matzo brie, scrambled eggs with matzo. On the same page sit biscuits and gravy, chicken-fried steak and eggs, migas and chorizo and eggs. The deli omelette splits the difference, cooked pancake-style with corned beef, pastrami or salami.
The pancake list runs from old-fashioned buttermilk to German-style pancakes with lemon butter and powdered sugar. The French toast is made with challah, and the bakery makes its own bagels, challah and rye.
The downtown location at 306 S. Houston St., across from Union Station, sits near the courthouses and is the only one serving Nova lox flown in weekly from New York. The others are on North Central Expressway between Northaven and Royal, on Forest Lane at Marsh, and on Campbell Road at Coit, where the dining room shows off murals by Vietnamese artist Tri Minh Nguyen.
None of them are fancy, and none need to be. Cindi’s has lasted this long on good deli food and a menu that has room for everyone.
Hours vary by location, so call ahead or check the menu and locations online. Downtown is 214-744-4745, Central is 214-739-0918, Forest is 972-241-9204 and Campbell is 972-248-0608. Online ordering is available.
Order the hot pastrami on rye and a cup of matzo ball soup, and get latkes for the table.
This Grapevine Deli named a sandwich after CraveDFW.
