Norton's Pastrami & Deli — Restaurant in Santa Barbara

Always friendly, always delicious, I've sampled the majority of the menu, and have yet to be disappointed. Contrary to the name, they do also offer chicken, tuna, or other deli meats. During covid they allow one customer or family unit into the store at a time to place take out orders. There is no available seating on site. The typical morning wait time is about five minutes for a standard order with little to no time spent waiting for other customers to place their orders first. All of their meals have ample meat, and satisfying ratios of veggies or sauce, as well as a standard full deli selection of breads. (Sour dough or rye anyone?) If you are on a low carb / keto or paleo diet, you can order any sandwich as a mixed greens salad. They operate a giant grill right in the window, and are experts at cooking bacon and other meats to achieve just the right texture. To me, pastrami is a bit intense/salty, so I only eat it occasionally, but their mom's plt has perfectly grilled crispy pastrami with veggies and sauce to help even out the palate. They offer a variety of meats for the French dip, and they pile the meat on THICK! Super yummy, and you'll almost certainly have some meat scraps you'll be happy to spare for the pup. They have a few grilled chicken options, and while I often find chicken can be too dry, I have not experienced that problem here. Even if the chicken were dry, I probably wouldn't notice as the sandwich recipes do a good job of offering moisture through veggies and sauces. Their tuna melt is good.. Pretty much what you'd expect from a tuna melt with lots of tuna on it, and plenty of cheese. I personally would add relish and celery to the tuna, and paprika on the cheese, but because the tuna doesn't seem to contain relish, the tuna salad platter should fit right in with keto or any other low carb/mo sugar guidelines. They offer a variety of Hebrew national hot dog recipes, with some topped with bacon, and some with sauerkraut.

Whether you want a light salad, or a satisfying meaty sandwich you can eat in two meals, you won't be disappointed at Norton's...

On vacation, I got to Norton's at the perfect time: right before a lunch rush that pushed the line out the door. The place is small with only a counter and 5 tables that are shared among diners. Service is friendly and efficient, and they bring the food to you which is nice. The sauerkraut they gave for free was good, and while I only got half sour pickles they were decent considering they were only half sours. I ordered a pastrami reuben which is something I wouldn't normally get, but I am fond of them and I don't have any old Jews here shaming me for putting a slice of cheese on meat. This was the best reuben I've had in awhile. Unlike most, they didn't overstuff the sandwich with Russian dressing, cheese and sauerkraut. All of these were applied conservatively, with the pastrami standing front and center. The bread here though held the sandwich back from being great; I wasn't expecting the world but it had a slight cardboard-y flavor rather than the slight, herby sourness you'd expect. That this was still a good sandwich is a testament to the other ingredients. Don't come here expect a super-authentic Jewish deli experience, but you will have a...

Saw this place on triple D and thought, ok drive down the coast and give it a try...and I don't know maybe it was an off day for this place or maybe it was later in the day, 3pm?. and they over it?...but it wasn't great..kinda plain, for the pastrami being the star of the show it wasn't huge at all, it was actually smallish...I ordered mine as a combo, and to get a small sandwich, a seriously small handful of fries and a fountain drink for 15.oo+, my experience was incredibly disappointing...the pickles were just salty, Really salty, not a flavorful pickle at all, (my date spit it out on a napkin- truth.)...I truly expected more on many levels...it was clean, the counter girl was nice, the two Hispanic guys cooking, at one point looked at each other and snickered as I watched them make my(smal portioned) lunch, which kinda took me back too...like WTH? My experience wasn't great, it left me seriously wanting...so I went down the street and got icecream......scratch it off my triple D...