Stanley’s New York Deli is closing tonight

unfortunately adding yet another chapter to the “nobody can compete with Shapiro’s” mythos in Indianapolis restaurant history.
Stanley’s succeeded as long as it did with absolutely no thanks to the Indianapolis northside Jewish community, many of whom went the first week, got slow service due to lines out the door and some last minute “we just opened” glitches, and then complained about it for months without ever going back to find out if things had changed…which they HAD. Within another week.
I do think that they made a mistake in not having breakfast every morning, particularly after the Hardees’ at 86th and Ditch closed, but it was probably too late by then to grab the altacocker clientele Brian Shapiro abandoned when he moved the north store to Carmel.
We will miss the full-stuffed corned-beef and pastrami sandwiches; the luscious kugle; the delectable brownies; the fabulous cookies; and the out-of-this-world New York Egg Sandwich on challah. But in particular we’ll miss the great folks at Stanley’s. We wish them well in all their future endeavors — and we hope that one of these days someone will actually succeed in cutting Brian Shapiro off at the knees. ‘Cause for one thing, Brian’s corned beef does NOT taste like Max’s, may Max rest in peace. I’ll just have to go back to having friends bring it back from Jack’s in Cleveland, I guess.