Chef W returns to his own kitchen with Don Pastrami’s

By Tom Blodgett
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The daughters of W Rieth — "Chef W" to most everybody — grew up in their dad's restaurant, Not Your Typical Deli, in Gilbert.

So when his 11-year-old walked into his new restaurant and told him, “Dad, this feels like right again,” it hit him hard.

That new restaurant is Don Pastrami’s in Mesa, part of the Sheraton Hotel Mesa at Wrigleyville West near Sloan Park in the Riverview area. It is where the former Gilbert restaurateur is returning to his own kitchen after spending much of the past four years on the corporate side of the restaurant business.

“They grew up in the deli,” Rieth said. “That was their whole life.”

Her reaction, he said, choked him up.

Don Pastrami’s is already open for catering, and Rieth is aiming to open the carryout sandwich shop to public customers by Sept. 1.

For Rieth, 50, it represents a return — but not an attempt to recreate Not Your Typical Deli.

“I’m ready for it again,” Rieth said. “I think that I got a lot to offer still. Just that point in my life where it’s just like, I want to do it for myself. I don’t want to do it for anybody else.”

Familiar food, a different restaurant

Not Your Typical Deli, which opened in Gilbert in 2016, became known as much for employing and training neurodivergent workers as for its food — though the food earned its own acclaim.

Don Pastrami’s takes its name from one of the deli’s top-selling sandwiches. Rieth said he used to imagine that if he ever started another restaurant, he could build a small carryout operation around the Don Pastrami name and character.

But even the signature pastrami is changing.

Rieth did not have a smoker at Not Your Typical Deli, using dry rubs there to approximate smoke flavor. At Don Pastrami’s, he has an in-house smoker and plans to produce the meat in small batches.

“This is the artisan part of my career,” Rieth said. “Everything’s going to be high level, as best as I could get.”

Rieth expects to smoke about 30 pounds of pastrami at a time. When a batch sells out, customers may have to wait for the next one.

Other planned offerings include smoked turkey, a pesto smoked pork tenderloin sandwich, Uncle Sal’s brisket made in an old-school Jewish style, cold-cut sandwiches and pasta salad bowls. His mother will make cheesecakes and the cookies familiar to customers of the old deli.

“I don’t want to try to mock the deli because the deli was its own thing,” Rieth said. “I don’t think the deli could ever be done again like that.”

Lessons from the past

Rieth also is applying lessons learned from the financial pressures of running a full-service restaurant.

Don Pastrami’s will be small, primarily a lunch operation at first, with Rieth in the kitchen and perhaps one other person at the register. There is no traditional dining room.

Catering is intended to provide the financial foundation. Rieth has catered sports camps this summer and hopes to build an office-catering business around Riverview.

“My goal is to have the catering pretty much carry the business,” Rieth said. “I want to have fun with the sandwich shop.”

Rieth found the location while looking for a commissary kitchen for his catering, food truck and trailer operations. The kitchen was largely built out, allowing him to get started without the kind of investment required for his previous restaurants.

He also has deliberately taken his time. Rieth has held the lease for about a year and said his inspections and licensing are complete.

“Every time I’ve ever opened a place, I was under the gun and I was rushed to do it,” Rieth said. “I don’t ever want to do that again. The only person I have to answer to is myself here.”

Keeping an old promise

Some familiar faces also will return.

Rieth began working with neurodivergent students years before Not Your Typical Deli opened, first offering cooking classes and life-skills training around 2011.

Those workers ultimately became central to the deli.

“That was Not Your Typical Deli, man,” Rieth said. “I just made the recipes. They made the restaurant work.”

Rieth later opened a culinary school that worked with the state’s Vocational Rehabilitation program, but the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the government contracts on which it depended. Not Your Typical Deli also struggled to recover from the pandemic and eventually closed.

Rieth said he plans to employ some of his former students and workers at Don Pastrami’s, including one he began training at age 12 who is now 23.

“I told him when he was 12 years old that he will always have a space with me, always forever,” Rieth said. “So he will be here.”

This time, however, Rieth does not intend to make employing neurodivergent workers part of the restaurant’s marketing identity. It will simply be part of the business.

Back to the kitchen

After Not Your Typical Deli, Rieth moved into food and beverage management at the sports complex now known as Arizona Athletic Grounds.

He was hired shortly before the former Legacy Sports Park entered bankruptcy and eventually became director of food and beverage, rebuilding the operation through the transition to Arizona Athletic Grounds.

“Gosh, I learned more in those last four years than I have in my entire life,” Rieth said.

He left his full-time position in February but continues contract work with Arizona Athletic Grounds. Don Pastrami’s also will have a presence there, with Rieth expecting a trailer to operate at the complex on weekends beginning in October.

But after years spent directing other people, Rieth missed making his own food.

“I’m excited to cook again,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”

Doing it around family

Rieth also wants to cook without allowing the restaurant to consume his life.

He has daughters ages 11 and 8 and said his corporate career sometimes required 90-hour workweeks.

Don Pastrami’s is being designed around them. Rieth plans to serve lunch and close in time to pick them up from school and make dinner for them.

“Instead of designing my kids around my career, I’m designing my career around my kids,” he said.

His daughters have their own space in the restaurant office, and his older daughter, Josephine, already operates Joey’s Lemonade from a converted 1957 camper Rieth rebuilt.

That helps explain why her reaction to seeing her father with his own restaurant again meant so much.

The catering business is running. The licenses are in place. Sept. 1 is the goal for opening the doors to sandwich customers.

And when they arrive, former Not Your Typical Deli customers will recognize pieces of the past — Rieth, some familiar workers, the cookies and, of course, the pastrami.

But this is not the old deli.

This time, there is a smoker in the kitchen.

Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him on X at @sp_blodgett.

Tom Blodgett
Senior News Editor | Gilbert

tblodgett@iniusa.org

Meet Tom
Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.

Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.

Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism. 

Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.  

Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).