eat Home > Restaurant Reviews

You push open the door at Network Deli and you’re not quite sure where you are: Is this a mom-and-pop soda fountain from the golden years, or a general store some localized tornado sucked straight out of West Virginia and plunked down at the foot of Television Hill? The mix of ’50s memorabilia, groceries, greeting cards, and party supplies all crowded around the lunch counter gives it an old-fashioned charm. Woodberry neighbors dropping in to chat and workers on their way to their industrial park or TV studio jobs stopping for a cup of coffee and a hello make for a true neighborhood lunch counter. The sandwiches run the gamut of typical deli fare: bologna, tuna salad, turkey, roast beef, hamburgers, cheese steak and whatnot, and the sides are starchy and/or fried, as you’d suspect. We picked up a turkey on rye ($4.95), which was wholesome and plenty big, and a cheeseburger ($5.25), which as promised was Angus beef, fresh-ground that morning. It was dang good. A side of fries ($1.75), freshly fried and crispy, was the natural choice. When dining at a lunch counter, you gotta get a milk shake. The vanilla shake ($3.95) was the perfect calorie punch after all that. While the old mills nearby get renovated into expensive condos, here’s hoping Network Deli can still dish out it out the way lunch counters used to: simple, unpretentious, and downright neighborly.

E-mail Tim Hill