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By Cecily Feltham

Daily Bruin Contributor

A Snapple at Jerry's Famous Deli is $2.35.

Ravenous, I didn't fully register the importance of such a price as I noted it on the display menu. So hungry, so naive. By the end of the night, however, I would have been clued in by two discerning friends that Jerry's is just too pricey for the student budget, and that neither the food nor the ambience is good enough to justify paying $8.95 for a taco salad, at least not more than once in a while.

In all fairness, I must state here my quirks as an eater. I am vegetarian. I am inclined to like any restaurant that considers "nosh" a mealtime. I have fond memories of eating apple pie and curly fries with a gaggle of girls at 3:00 a.m. at the Jerry's in the Marina. I was starving and alone when I entered the door at 7:20 at night. All of this contributed to my willingness to like Jerry's and pay whatever it took to get me some food.

It was Yom Kippur and the joint was jumping with people noisily breaking their fasts. The deli, which is normally open 24 hours a day, had just reopened at 5:00. As he led me to my table, the host noted that the restaurant was just about as crowded as it gets after a gala movie opening. Those interested in hobnobbing, he says, should come around 12:30 and after movies let out, when Jerry's is at its busiest. The background of voices was happily boisterous as people all around were eating with much gusto. Arriving at my table, I thought that perhaps such passion was due in part to Jerry's color scheme - shiny cherry - colored tabletops and bright red booths. ("It's all a conspiracy," I had once been told. "Red makes you really hungry.")

But credit must also be given to the aroma in the air. I sat down to the smell of something wonderful and tried to look discreetly around me to discover what it was. The woman next to me noted my all-too-obvious interest and said, "It's chicken soup with matzo ball," adding that it was immensely tummy-pleasing. (I saw a grown man whine at his waitress and stomp his feet when he discovered that Jerry's was out of their famous chicken soup. Sad, really, but a testament to its tastiness.)

Thwarted by the meat ingredients, however, I was forced to re-address the menu and all of its options - everything from "Hot Dogs & Knocks" to "Deli Mexico." After much deliberation, I finally choose the "Veggie Melt" ($8.25), which to my surprise and delight came with french fries.

Having ordered, I surveyed the scene. Customers under 25 were definitely in the minority, which is probably best explained by my friend's theory, "You have to be, like, a working professional to be able to afford a Jerry's corned beef sandwich ($8.75) on any sort of regular basis." I had just begun to wonder whether the black phones sitting between booths were functional or not when my food arrived, exactly five minutes after I had ordered it. My waiter told me that yes, customers can use the phones while they dine, as long as they have a phone card. I thanked him for both his speediness and knowledge and brought my attention to the meal in front of me. I noted that my sandwich was coveted from afar by two newcomers, and with good reason - it looked colorful and almost-too-greasy-but-not-quite.

As I was writing down my initial reaction to my meal ("Yummy but too many onions") I was happily surprised to hear my name, look up, and see third-year UCLA student Zenia Park standing in front of me. "Zenia!" I cried. "Is your presence here living testimony to the fact that Jerry's food is so good that students will bear the high cost, impending bankruptcy be damned?" (Or something like that.) She laughed. "No. I was just walking by when I saw you through the window. It's way too expensive! Sometime I'll come back, just for the ambiance."

Ha! This was exactly what I needed to know, what I had been oblivious to all this time. Jerry's was costly! I considered this while playing the "She looks familiar. Is she famous?" game as I waited for the bathroom - part of that ambiance that Zenia was talking about are the glam early eighties photos of stars from Lonnie Anderson to Tattoo that grace the walls of the hallway to the john. As I looked up at Erik Estrada, I thought, "So Jerry's is really about paying for the atmosphere. Hmmm. Is it worth it?" I realized that I was obviously not qualified to answer that question alone and bolted out of line in search of Shari, my meat-eating and self-described "deli connoisseur" friend. She would have an answer.

Dragging her back with me an hour and a bit later, I noticed that the clientele looked remarkably younger the second time around.

Shari was more jaded than I, more sharp. She shrieked, "What is this?" upon viewing the pre-meal pickle platter and put a green tomato up to her nose and sniffed it. She grimaced, then picked up the most conventional looking dill pickle and stuck it in her mouth. "Mmmm," she delighted. Then her face changed. "It's a little bit weird," said she. Then, "Nasty. I want to vomit." This may seem a bit fickle on her part, but I have had that exact same reaction upon tasting Jerry's pickles elsewhere.

After tackling the menu, Shari fearlessly ordered a turkey sandwich ($8.75), then looked at me. "Bastards. Extra fifty cents for cheese, another thirty-five to have it on baguette." She sighed. So as to not leave Shari feeling alone, I made the sacrifice of ordering a brownie ($1.65). We talked. The food came in record time - I'd say four minutes, tops. Shari ventured into the yellowy stuff overflowing its cup on her plate. Her verdict: "The potato salad is damn good. Thumbs up." I looked down at my brownie - its icing made it look like something out of a vending machine. Instinctively, I was horrified. Soon enough, however, I discovered it was tasty. And relative to everything else on the menu, it was a bargain.

Shari's final call was: "The sandwich wasn't all that. Good turkey, but it just didn't come together for me. On a scale of 1 - 10, considering the price, I give it a 5." Ouch. We paid and passed the take-out deli, where scrumptious-looking cakes rotated in glass containers. In the name of journalism, I brought home a slice of strawberry cheesecake ($4.25). Goshdarn-credible. Classic. Mmmm.

Our decision was that the rating of Jerry's is proportional to what time it is. If it's 1:00 p.m. and you can go to Don Antonio's and get a honkin-big eggplant parmesan sandwich for $4.25, Jerry's gets a 6. If it's 1:00 a.m. and you need pancakes (my roommate swears by chocolate-chip blintzes), Jerry's gets a 9. And if it's 3:00 a.m. and you want to split a big plate of hot curly fries with a roommate for $3.35, Jerry's gets an 11. Just make sure you take a trip to the bathroom. You're paying for the ambiance. Get your money's worth.