Brent's Delicatessen & Restaurant — Restaurant in Thousand Oaks

As a frequent diner of brents for years,I have to let you know how disappointed we were with our meal today at your Westlake location. Being near this location we decided to try it. Although it's newer we like n.y style deli of Northridge location better. My mom and I shared our usual deconstructed 3 decker sandwich of corned beef and some rare roast beef. 1st order came with pastrami, and the roast beef was medium. It was tough and not way we ordered. Server took back for corned beef asked if we wanted to keep roast beef. I wanted everything fresh not sitting on plate. She came with corned beef. Gave my mom some. Since she is elderly I cut up some of her meal. It was hard to cut. I thought it was the knife not being sharp enough. I cut a piece for myself. It was dry and tough. Ended up taking the roast beef and corned beef home. We couldn't chew it. I realized later it wasn't fully cooked. I will slowly cook remaining til tender. have corned beef at other brents all the time and it always perfect. Thinly sliced and very tender. I had already sent the potato salad back as the potatoes were not thoroughly cooked. They were hard. Server brought to mgr attention and came back to say he agreed. We switched to cole slaw. One of my friends had the cabbage soup and half roast beef sandwich rare. Came out like ours more well done and was told this is how it comes. My friend ordered a slice of tomato and Swiss cheese. For real, 1.00 for slice of tomato and 2.00 for slice of cheese. I also gave her a slice of each from my platter. I could've just given it to her. Totally overpriced for slice of of each. Other friend ordered chicken noodle soup and half turkey sandwich . I tasted the soup and it was very good. She was very disappointed in turkey sandwich. Turkey was dry and came plain, never asked what she wanted. No mayo, etc. None on table had to ask for it. What is up with all this. Is there a new inexperienced deli cook. Ordered fries very crispy. Thought it would the large bowl we get at Northridge location, it was a handful in a metal container that my crisp fries turned soft and soggy. Lucky for us the rye bread was very good, steaming hot and very moist, only 2 butters?. The new pickles and sour tomatoes were perfect, way we like. Service was nothing special server very hard to track down, was all over the place especially with all our issues. I understand restaurants raising prices as brents has done this past year by a lot, but raising prices and lowering quality is not acceptable for most people. We used to order the deli platter until price raised from 16.95 or 17.95 to 25.00. One of our favorite servers from Northridge Francisco recommending the deconstructed sandwich which we have been doing. All 4 of us had issues some really bad with our meal here. We will not return to this location. The food quality and quantity was a big disappointment. We should've gone to Northridge location much closer to where we live and the food and service so much better. Think we'll be cutting back from going to brents for a bit. Will miss my corned beef Reuben up to 17.95 and smaller. Can go to black Angus and have prime rib for 3.00 more. Oh, and raising the price of your chocolate chip cookies to 3.00 from 1.75. Are you serious the brownies are the same price as before. Server said you guys were going to raise price of soggy fries from 1.95 to 2.95. Unfortunately I will not in good conscience be able to recommend brents to anyone right now as there doesn't seem to be any consistency as there was before. I'm very sorry I could not give a more...

I have celiac disease, and I would not recommend eating here if you have this or any food allergies at all. Before eating here, I called Brent's to find out how they are about gluten cross-contamination in their kitchens. I was told over the phone that they have a gluten free menu, and was assured that they are very conscious of cross contamination and go to lengths to avoid it. I was happy to hear this, but when we actually ate here they served me food with gluten several times. I ordered a half sandwich and soup. Chicken soup was on the gluten free menu, and I asked the waitress if that was their chicken noodle because I didn't see another soup, and she told me it was. I ordered it but asked if she could double check that it was gluten free. She came with the soup but never asked. So I asked her if she could please tell me what was in the soup. She then went back and asked the chef who told her it was definitely gluten free. I had never seen gluten free noodles that look like this before, so just to double check I asked her if the chef told her what the ingredients are. She told me he didn't know but was sure it was gluten free. She offered to go get the bag and look at the ingredients for me, which I asked her to please do. She came back with a picture on her phone of the ingredients... The first of which was durum wheat flour. NOT gluten free. I sent the soup back and got a salad. Then she had asked me if I wanted my bread toasted on my sandwich and I asked if it was toasted in the same place they toast other bread. She said yes, so I said I would not like it toasted and that it was very important that it was kept separate from all wheat ingredients because I am very sensitive and didn't want to get sick. They brought me my sandwich toasted. She apologized about this and after having the sandwich remade, she told me she spoke to the manager who had told her that the chicken soup without the noodles is gluten free, but the chefs did not know this. Seems a pretty big oversight to me... Especially since I had to ask 3 times to figure this out. I wonder how many other people got sick here because of their carelessness. After mistakes involving such a serious allergy were made I would have expected either the chef or manager to come over and apologize, or reassure me in some way that the food I did receive was actually safe, or perhaps a discount on the bill. None of these things happened.

Stay away from this place if you have any food allergies. They don't know what is in their own food and don't take allergies seriously despite...

We cannot order takeout from Brent's any more.

Their food is excellent, but we don't get what we order. I ordered the turkey with stuffing (one is more than enough for both of us). It had (from their menu):

"Our fresh roasted turkey, sliced thick and served over a bed of savory stuffing. Served with our rich turkey gravy, mashed potatoes, mashed yams, cranberry sauce, and coleslaw."

We ordered with no gravy, as it's too heavy for us. We figured why make Brent's waste money on gravy and a container.

We received turkey, stuffing, yams, cranberry sauce, coleslaw, dill pickles (if we'd been asked about pickles,, I'd have enjoyed new pickles, but we don't eat dills), and cucumber salad (perfectly fine but not what we ordered or wanted). We got neither mashed potatoes nor gravy. We very much wanted the mashed potatoes, else we could have ordered the turkey dinner (almost what we got but a dollar cheaper). We paid more for stuffing instead of bread on the turkey open faced sandwich (which does come with more mashed potatoes than we eat).

Out of the last nine times we have ordered online or on the phone at Westlake Village, we have received what we ordered once. We're already driving nearly an hour round way to reach Westlake. In 30+ years at Northridge, the ONLY time our order was wrong was when some guy walked off with his several bags AND TWO OF MINE. Brent's of course replaced the missing food.

Westlake Village has never offered reimbursement for their errors. They have allowed us to drive another hour to get the bread that was supposed to come with the kreplach soup or pick up mashed potatoes while the rest of our dinner cooled..

Do I have to open EVERY CONTAINER IN A BUSY DELI to see that under the turkey is both mashed potatoes and stuffing, our food getting colder all the time?

Driving the extra 45 minutes round trip to Northridge seems absurd. I feel my only option is to start giving bad reviews to bring the QA in Westlake back up to Northridge's standards. When Westlake first opened, these problems did not happen.

So much for our holiday...