A full pound of corned beef? Now lunch is showing off.
This downtown Columbus deli does not believe in timid sandwiches. Corned beef stacks high, rye works overtime, and some orders look ready to challenge the whole table before the first bite.
The oversized classics carry plenty of personality, but the deli does not save the good stuff for lunch. Corned beef shows up early too, giving breakfast its own reason to get serious.
There is also a family story behind the counter, with roots reaching back to Cleveland decades ago.
I’d probably need a game plan before tackling one of these sandwiches.
The Jawbreaker Starts With A Full Pound Of Corned Beef
A full pound of corned beef sounds like the kind of number someone might exaggerate after lunch. At Lexi’s, the Jawbreaker really does arrive with that much meat.
The Jawbreaker is built with one pound of thin-sliced corned beef on rye. No pile of extra toppings is needed to make the point. The sandwich is mostly about the meat, with fresh rye holding the whole thing together.
The corned beef is prepared in-house and sliced thin, and smaller corned beef sandwiches are available elsewhere on the menu. That makes the Jawbreaker easy to spot as the deli’s larger step up rather than the standard sandwich wearing a dramatic name.
There is also some history behind the way Lexi’s approaches a deli sandwich. George and Mary Georges opened Danny’s Deli on St. Clair Avenue in Cleveland in 1978.
Their son Dan Georges later brought that family deli tradition to Columbus and eventually opened Lexi’s on Third, naming the restaurant after his daughter Alexiana.
When the Columbus Danny’s Deli closed in 2019, several familiar favorites and its catering operation became part of Lexi’s. Corned beef, pastrami, turkey, Reubens, breakfast plates, soups, salads, burgers, and wraps all stayed in the broader deli picture.
Today, the menu still carries that broad deli format across breakfast, sandwiches, soups, salads, burgers, wraps, and catering.
So the Jawbreaker is not sitting alone on an otherwise ordinary menu. It belongs to a place where corned beef shows up again and again, only this time the portion reaches a full pound before the bread even enters the conversation.
Fresh Rye Has Its Work Cut Out For It
Rye bread keeps showing up whenever the corned beef section gets serious.
The regular corned beef sandwich comes on fresh rye. The Jawbreaker uses rye too, only with a much larger portion of meat.
Move over to the Jawbreaker Reuben and the bread gets grilled before Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and that same pound of corned beef are stacked on top.
The New Yorker takes another route with 11 ounces of corned beef, double Swiss, and coleslaw on rye. Lexi’s Tower returns to grilled rye for a one-pound sandwich made with several deli meats.
There is also the Love Connection, which lets you choose two meats from corned beef, pastrami, roast beef, or turkey, then adds Swiss cheese and coleslaw on rye. Corned beef can be part of the pair, but it does not have to be.
Rye even carries the morning menu into deli territory. The NYC breakfast sandwich combines corned beef, scrambled eggs, and Swiss cheese on grilled rye.
By the time lunch rolls around, the same bread has already worked through breakfast and is ready for another shift under the heavier sandwiches.
Corned beef may change partners from one sandwich to the next, but rye keeps finding its way back into the stack.
The Reuben Takes The Oversized Approach Even Further
If the regular Jawbreaker is all about keeping the ingredient list simple, the Jawbreaker Reuben takes the same oversized base and starts adding layers.
It begins with a full pound of thin-sliced corned beef. Melted Swiss cheese and sauerkraut go on next, and the whole thing is served on grilled rye.
The same full-pound corned beef foundation stays in place while the classic Reuben ingredients change the sandwich around it.
Smaller Reuben-style options are also available, which means the Jawbreaker Reuben sits at the bigger end of the lineup rather than setting the portion size for every Reuben in the place.
The difference between the two Jawbreakers is easy to follow once they are side by side. One keeps things focused on corned beef and rye. The other adds Swiss, sauerkraut, and grilled bread without reducing the amount of meat.
The ingredients stay familiar, but the portion moves well beyond the usual deli lunch.
Corned Beef Shows Up Long Before Lunchtime
Corned beef starts working early at Lexi’s.
Breakfast is served until 10:30 a.m., and several morning dishes pull the deli’s signature meat into eggs, potatoes, toast, and grilled rye.
Corned Beef Hash comes with two eggs and toast. The Clevelander combines two eggs, corned beef, home fries, and toast. There is also a Corned Beef Omelette for anyone who wants the meat folded straight into the egg portion of breakfast.
Then there is the NYC, which turns the morning into a handheld deli sandwich with corned beef, scrambled eggs, and Swiss cheese on grilled rye.
Hash goes in one direction, the omelette in another, and the NYC brings rye and Swiss into the picture before the larger lunch sandwiches take over later.
Once breakfast ends at 10:30 a.m., the menu moves more fully toward deli sandwiches, soups, salads, burgers, and wraps.
If you came in expecting corned beef to wait patiently until noon, Lexi’s has already put it to work several hours earlier.
The New Yorker Gives Big Appetites Another Serious Option
The New Yorker does not reach the full pound used by the Jawbreaker sandwiches, but 11 ounces of corned beef still gives it plenty of presence.
The sandwich combines those 11 ounces with double Swiss cheese and coleslaw on rye. That build gives it a different personality from the Jawbreaker Reuben, where sauerkraut and grilled rye join the corned beef instead.
Here, coleslaw replaces the sauerkraut, and the cheese comes doubled. The meat stays front and center, but the sandwich moves away from the classic Reuben formula.
Lexi’s also offers smaller half-sandwich combinations with soup or salad, so not every lunch has to arrive at Jawbreaker scale.
It also keeps things simple compared with Lexi’s Tower. The New Yorker stays with corned beef, Swiss, coleslaw, and rye rather than bringing several meats and a longer list of toppings into one stack.
At 11 ounces, it still qualifies as one of the deli’s bigger corned beef sandwiches without copying the exact formula of the Jawbreaker.
If the full pound sounds like more than you want to negotiate at lunch, the New Yorker offers another way into the same oversized side of the menu.
Lexi’s Tower Pushes The Deli Stack Even Higher
Lexi’s Tower takes the one-pound idea and changes the equation.
Instead of using a pound of corned beef alone, the Tower spreads that weight across corned beef, roast beef, pastrami, and turkey. Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, mayo, and stadium mustard join the meats, and grilled rye holds the stack together.
Roast beef can occasionally be unavailable, but the Tower itself is built as a four-meat sandwich with corned beef, roast beef, pastrami, and turkey.
The Tower is very different from the Jawbreaker, mixing several deli meats instead of focusing on corned beef alone.
Corned beef and pastrami sit together here, while turkey and roast beef add two more layers. Swiss keeps the cheese familiar, and the lettuce, tomato, mayo, and stadium mustard give the sandwich a fuller topping list than the other oversized options.
It is still a one-pound sandwich. It just refuses to spend that whole pound on one meat.
Downtown Columbus Gets Its Corned Beef Fix Five Days A Week
Lexi’s on Third keeps a weekday schedule in downtown Columbus, opening at 7:30 a.m. Monday through Friday and closing at 2:30 p.m. The deli is closed Saturday and Sunday.
Breakfast runs until 10:30 a.m., so the first part of the day belongs to eggs, hash, omelets, home fries, toast, and breakfast sandwiches.
After that, the larger deli menu takes over with corned beef, pastrami, turkey, roast beef when available, burgers, wraps, salads, soups, and other sandwiches.
Matzo ball soup is part of the menu too.
The restaurant is at 100 E Broad St #150, Columbus, OH 43215, in the downtown core near the Ohio Statehouse.
Pickup and catering are also part of the business, continuing the Georges family’s deli operation after the Columbus Danny’s Deli closed in 2019.
The fun part is how often corned beef changes shape over the course of one weekday. In the morning, it can land beside eggs and home fries or get tucked into grilled rye with scrambled eggs and Swiss.
By lunch, it is stacked 11 ounces high in the New Yorker or pushed all the way to a full pound in the Jawbreaker.
That is a lot of mileage for one deli staple, and Lexi’s keeps finding another way to pile it onto the plate.