Since spring 1995
The family behind the menu.
Every deli claims a story. Paisan’s prints its own on the menu board: Sammy’s, Jacob’s, Valentino’s, Nonna’s, Kaidyn’s, Papa Zena, Nonno Ben’s, Angelo’s, Bella’s, Mama’s, Evelyn’s. That’s not marketing. That’s the family.
It started with catering. Then people kept knocking on the door.
Mike and Angela Angelis opened Paisan’s on April 1, 1995, as a catering company, with Mike’s thirty years of food-and-beverage experience behind it. They set up in 600 square feet in a South Reno industrial park, on purpose. As Mike put it: “We like the walk-ins, but our specialty is delivery to business folks who don’t have a lot of lunch-hour-driving time.”
But people kept knocking on the door. So they started making sandwiches: six of them. The six became fifteen, then a wall. Breakfast joined, then a full Mexican menu, then house-baked bread. In the winter of 2019 the family moved up the street into 8,400 square feet of brick and timber built around a commercial kitchen big enough for the catering fleet — six trucks and counting.
“I believe if my food’s good and my service is good, they’re going to come back.”— Mike Angelis, to KOLO 8, on 30 years in business
Mike and Angie at the original 600-square-foot deli.
A proud Greco Roman.
Ask Mike about the meatball sandwich and you get the whole heritage in one answer: “My uncle from San Francisco made it that way at his restaurant and showed me over 30 years ago. The sauce is my dad’s believe or not he is Greek and my mother was the Italian. So I am a proud Greco Roman.”
That’s why an Old World Italian deli serves a gyro people call the best in town, why the breakfast menu has The Papou (Greek for grandpa) and why the biscotti recipe is Nonie Fran’s. Chef David has been in the kitchen nearly the full thirty years. Regulars get greeted by name. Two review sites' worth of customers describe the same thing: it feels like family, because it is.
And every Thursday, someone walks the dining room handing out free dessert. They’ve done it for more than twenty years.
Reno noticed. So did the country.
Top 100 in America.
In 2021, Yelp named Paisan’s #80 on its Top 100 Places to Eat in the United States. The whole country. KOLO 8 came for the story, Fox 11 came for National Sandwich Month, and This Is Reno wrote up “an Italian deli with a menu of Mexican food.” Mike told KOLO they were “honored to represent Reno.”
