When I called Stella’s to find out their hours, a man said, “I’m not sure … hold on,” muffling the phone. “Today we’re closing at 2.” So what time do they normally close? “Whenever,” was the reply. Any hope was quickly dashed that this cursed location — former tenants include My Beautiful Luncheonette and Mad Lyn’s Café — had finally found a match. While I was lucky that they didn’t close before I got there, the smell that met me at the door foreshadowed doom.
The stench is not easy to explain — a blend of cheap food and mildew — but one often finds it wafting from underfrequented sandwich shops. For whatever reason, the people behind the counter looked devastated. I cheerily marched up to them, making a vague attempt to pretend I didn’t notice the scourge among us. I had already decided upon the homemade soup of the day, corn chowder ($2.25), advertised in the window display. Not surprisingly, the soup was also under the dark spell. Much like the packaged slime they sell at Toys “R” Us, it was a thick, goopy mess. The flavor was unbalanced, simultaneously bland and pungent.
The sandwiches I tried were both OK. The roast beef and cheddar ($4.99) had a tasty horseradish sauce, but the meat was of inferior quality, more like prepackaged lunchmeat than sliced roast beef. The bread, however, was moist, grainy and delicious. (If I had to do it again, I’d order the sandwich without the roast beef.) The tuna wrap ($4.99) was so mediocre that it inspired no more than to say just that.
I think Stella’s might be the oracle of its own fate. They really might be closing “whenever.”
This article appears in Mar 17-23, 2004.