Piled high pastrami – one menu highlight at this West Jordan deli

I kicked myself for failing to snag a bite at Enrico’s Deli during their first outing in Murray. Mercifully, the closure of the location was a brief one, with the restaurant bouncing back this week at Jordan Landing (3778 Center View Way – opposite the movie theatre).

Enrico’s menu is essentially a love letter to NYC, a giddy recounting of bodegas, folded slices, and buzzy deli lines. Pastrami is what draws me quickly to West Jordan this time around. Take a minute to insert your own favorite Seinfeld quotes here now. Of course, there’s pastrami, and then there’s pastrami. One wafer-thin and plastically pliant, the other beautifully frail and prone to a pile of finger-scooped fragments. Guess which this is.

The pastrami at Enrico’s can be found across several dishes, but these particularly greedy eyes fall halfway down a third menu board. Number fifteen – The Rico. The sandwich features a blushworthy bounty of pastrami – a full pound in fact. The cured meat wends its way directly from New York City, much like several menu items at Enrico’s Deli. The pastrami arrives in Utah, ready for on-site preparation, spending a quarter of the day slowly braising. The result is frankly impeccable.

Layer upon layer of thickly sliced meat is piled onto the Rico. Swiss and spicy mustard can also be found within the toasted rye sandwich, but it’s all about that pastrami, gossamer-esque, crumbling and tumbling with every bite. Salty, smokey, warm spices, magical stuff – and comparable to the best I’ve tasted in town.

At $20.99 the Rico is an absolute steal, like the rest of the menu frankly. The phrase is idly doled out far too often but it’s ample for two to share – and you’d be wise to bring an accomplice to tackle it in one sitting. Should you opt to go solo, you might find yourself quoting a certain George Constanza, “I flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami.”

Other useful links

• Free newsletter – signup and receive our weekly newsletter for free
• Food talk group – chew the fat with other like-minded Utah foodies over on Facebook.
• Best of SLC 2024 – what you can’t miss in the Beehive right now.

Stuart Melling

Hi, I’m Stuart, nice to meet you!  I’m the founder, writer and wrangler at Gastronomic SLC.  I’m a multiple-award winning journalist and have written in myopic detail about the Salt Lake City  dining scene for the better part of seventeen years.

I’ve worked extensively with multiple local publications from Visit Salt Lake to Salt Lake Magazine, not least helped to consult on national TV.   Pause those credits, yep, that’s me! I’m also a former restaurant critic of more than five years, working for the Salt Lake Tribune.    I’m largely fueled by a critical obsession with rice, alliteration and the use of big words I don’t understand.   What they’re saying about me: “Not inaccurate”, “I thought he was older”, “I don’t share his feelings”.

Want to know more? This is why I am the way I am.