Que Deli
333 W. Fort Street #1I had a couple of long days in Detroit last week.
It all started Tuesday night when a co-worker and I left Kalamazoo around 1:00. We worked early in to the next morning then headed to our hotel at the Fort Ponchatrain downtown. We got a little sleep, got back up and went at it again until we left Detroit a little after noon.
I was really stressed out on Tuesday night and stress makes me not hungry. The rest of our crew went to Mootz Pizzeria for dinner but I was still working out some issues at the venue we were working at and wasn’t hungry at the time. I think the only thing I ended up eating on Tuesday was some snacks at the venue we were working at.
I didn’t get a lot of sleep before getting up Wednesday morning. We had a job to do then a few hours of rest time. I headed back to my room and thought about walking somewhere for breakfast. I’m pretty sure the rest of my colleagues just ate at the hotel but in the end, I didn’t even feel like doing that. I just wanted to lay down for a few more hours.
My search for breakfast did lead me to a good looking deli nearby though and instead of breakfast, I decided to hit it up on the way out of town for lunch.
Que Deli is on Fort Street near Cass Street in the Fort Washington Plaza. The deli near the Federal Building in downtown Detroit is named after it’s owner, Kujtim (Que) Kolami. The business is on the street level part of 16 story Fort Washington Plaza building built in the late 1960’s. The building is slated for demolition sometime in the near future to make way for a hotel project connecting to the nearby by Huntington Place. The entrance is on the Fort Street side of the building and while there are some garages in the area for parking, there are spaces along the street as well. There were a few open ones that were easy to get in to so I was able to park right in front of the building.
The restaurant is both a sit down full service restaurant and a to-go deli. There’s an order counter right as you walk in the door with a menu hanging overhead. A guy in the kitchen asked if I was placing an order to go or dining in. I said to-go and asked for the order. He didn’t write anything down yet and he didn’t ring it up right away. He just got to work making it happen.
Since I was just waiting for my sandwich, I took a seat at a rail to the right of the order counter. There are some pub stools up against the rail that looks back out on to the busy Fort Street. You could probably eat here if you wanted to but I was ready to get back on the road. I had very little sleep and still had work to do once we got back to Kalamazoo.
The dining room is down a short flight of stairs to the left of the entrance. It’s a pretty large space with four top tables packed in to the middle and a row of tables along a padded bench seat on either side of the room. This area is full service and there was a waitress taking care of the people who chose to dine in.
I put in an order for Smoked Turkey and Pastrami sandwich with a side order for fries. The cost was right around $20. It took a little less than 10 minutes for the order to come up and once it was bagged up, the cook brought it up and rung me up at the cash register.
I was really hungry because I hadn’t really eaten much over the last two days. As much as I wanted the sandwich, I didn’t think it was a good idea to try and eat that while navigating the highways out of Detroit.
I popped open the box of fries instead. The fries were the simple frozen battered fries that I don’t love but will always gladly eat when I’m hungry. There was a decent amount in the box and it came with some ketchup packets. I don’t like ketchup anyway but trying to dip in ketchup while driving would have been a bad idea anyway. I just ate them as they were. They were fine and held me over until I could get to the sandwich a little bit later down the road.
I got to about Scio Township west of Ann Arbor before my colleague asked if we could pull off.. He needed some caffeine so I pulled in to a gas station. I grabbed a couple of Pepsi’s and while I was waiting for him, I dug in to the sandwich.
This sandwich is both pastrami and turkey with provolone cheese and honey mustard on toasted white bread. This sandwich was exactly as good as I had hoped it would be. The toasted bread was buttery and crunchy and the meat between the bread was amazing. I love a good pastrami sandwich and this would have been delicious on it’s own. It was even better with the turkey and that honey mustard which gave a sweet and tangy kick. I had planned on only eating half while we were stopped but once my colleague got back in the car, I told him we were going to have to wait until I was done with the whole thing. It was so good and I just couldn’t bring myself to box up the second half for later. I had to eat it right away.
I’m not really an insider when it comes to Detroit food joints but this is one that was never on my radar. There are a few sandwich places around town I’ve heard things about but Que Deli has never come up in the conversation. That’s too bad because this is an amazingly good sandwich. I’m not sure what’s going to happen to them if the planned demolition of this building moves forward but I hope they find a new place. Que is a place that will stay on my radar now when I’m in downtown Detroit.
