Napoleon Deli

If you are looking for a good local sandwich shop for lunch this is the place. Napoleons is a regular on my lunch rotation. The food is always consistent and always very good. The service is always very fast and the staff is always very pleasant.
I think the bread is what makes this place so good. I have ventured out and tried some of the different sandwiches on their menu, but my favorite is the #1. The combination of the ingredients in the sandwich make me want to have another bite. Sometimes when I come I get soup and sandwich. The broccoli cheddar soup again is my favorite of the ones I have tried. Lastly for food, if you like dessert their bread pudding is some of the best I have had in the local area. Again, I believe it’s their homemade bread that makes it taste amazing.
The tables here are kind of small, but there are a lot of them. The chairs here always weird me out, because the feel very flimsy. The over feel of the dining area is mall food court. Additionally, The parking lot is always full, which is not a bad thing, but the setup very awkward and hard to actually park in.
I recommend grabbing a #1 the next time you are I. The local area.

The best French bread and the ultimate sandwiches. their sauce they put on the sandwiches is out of this world. I love this place!

Went and got a sub to split with my husband. Talk about a rip off. I got a foot long sub with chips and a drink. It was 11 bucks and had two slices of meat on it. So disappointed! Only gave it a two because the bread was really good.

Ate here 20 Feb 15 with co-​workers. Bread wasn’t homemade like I thought, but better quality than most non homemade bread deli establishments. I ordered the turkey and cheese, and potato soup. The turkey and cheese wasn’t Boars Head quality but it will do for a quick lunch, and the soup was nothing special, it seemed like it came out of a can and into a crock pot (to keep warm) and onto my plate.
The garlic tasting sauce they put on the sandwich was good I must say. everything else was «meh»
I was going to get the bread pudding but noticed that it was just sitting out on the counter, opened to the elements (uncovered), no heat lamp, and right near the cash register where customers pay and retrieve there food. I thought that was odd and unsanitary.

I ordered the Empire half sandwich and potato soup. I enjoyed the bread, seemed better quality than most deli’s in the area. The soup was a little lackluster, tasted like Campbell’s chunky soup. Later, I found out that they only make the French onion dip in house.
One bigger negative was sanitation issues. The bread pudding was sorting out on the country uncovered where people were picking up there food. Also, only noticed one or two employees with any kind of gloves or hair nets in while preparing food.

FIrst off, let me say that I am an experienced restaurant reviewer, I know this is wordy, but you need to know what this place WAS… before the fall. Secondly, Nepoleons has always been one of my favorite places. So, bearing those two things in mind, it pains me greatly to have to write this:
WHAT HAPPENED???
I grew up in MWC, and I’ve been going to Napoleons since back in the day when it was on 29^th. It moved locations, but fortunately owner and sandwich extraordinaire Renee (and the famous Champs Elysse painting) were retained. I moved away but whenever I came home the first place I wanted to go to was Napoleons (okay… sometimes Ted’s, which has a recent Mid-​Del addition at 1 – 40 and Sooner). I was never disappointed, and Renee remembered me even after a four year absence while I was in Europe for university. He knew most customers by name and even what they ordered, not an easy task with all the Tinker lunchers filling up the place! It was comforting, consistent, delicious and friendly… in a word, an institution.
When my husband moved to Oklahoma, he fell in love and he and Renee became fast friends because of his constant gushing about the quality of the food. We were once a weekers, and when we moved away, it was our last meal and one of the few things that made us lament leaving the state for Denver. We heard the death knell over the Rockies when I heard Renee was selling. We all (and I mean ALL) had our concerns, but were assured by Renee and the new owners that nothing would change.
So, naturally, when I took a trip back last week, my husband’s one and only request was a whole #6 (Carousel Turkey) and one of the dense bitter chocolate brownies that Renee always slipped gratis onto our table as he walked by.
I heard rumors the quality had suffered. I was warned.
I went the afternoon of my 6pm flight home to their new ‘third’ location at 15^th and Midwest. It’s nice if not generic. It lacks all the charm of the original, and even the coziness of the second location. The painting is still there, the happy people of Paris mocking me as I looked longingly for the familiar face of Renee.
I was greeted by a surly teenager who seemed put out and bored. I ordered, and asked, «Does Renee ever come in anymore?»
«Who?» she asked.
Uh-​oh.
Tucked safely into my ‘big’ purse, the enticing scent of butcher-​block paper wrapped onions and garlic ranch sauce rousing the interest of a bevy of TSA agents, Napoleons made perhaps its first appearance in Indianapolis. People, it was 1 am on a weeknight, but we sat down to eat.
To coin a phrase; «Where’s the turkey?» There was no meat. Three measly pieces of turkey, when you used to have to shove the stuff back in from the other end. The cheese was the same thick provolone, but there was definitely less of it. The lettuce to bread ratio would have satisfied your pickier rabbits. Two slices of tomato on a whole sandwich, and two pickles. Okay, to be fair, there was enough onion and they were generous enough with the sauce. I won’t give them credit for the bread… that’s imported from Ingrid’s bakery on the other side of town.
The brownie, which once rivaled the bakeries of Paris, was now unmistakably Duncan Hines. Gone was the lusciously bitter decadence that stuck to the roof of your mouth bringing moans of chocolaty ecstasy.
We looked at one another over the oversized white butcher blocked paper which had once been the purveyor of ultimate happiness and at the exact same time, we both said the same thing:
«End of an era.»