Category Archives: Uncategorized

March 31,2007

First impression: where’s the menu?? A choice of 8 sandwiches. My head swivels around and around, searching desparately for any mention of corned beef, rye bread, pastrami, brown mustard or other ubiquitous deli fare. Nope. Just a choice of 8. Two kinds of cheese, swiss or provolone. Oh + American if that can be counted. Cheese on every sandwich even, bleh, tuna salad.

Potbelly does have pickles – for a buck apiece, not included with your sandwich, not even a spear – but that’s about the extent of it. Potbelly bears no resemblance to a deli. A more apt description would be Riffing on Subway, without much soul.

The only bread available – rolls, white or brown – are toasted to a crisp, their saving grace. Filling choices are narrow – turkey, roast beef, a variation on an Italian sub, peanut butter and jelly, plus 4 others – and uninspired, but serviceable. To be honest, my sandwich, tuna salad with the proverbial melted cheese, which was adhered to the top of the bread seeming to have gravity-defying drips, was not bad. And cheap too. No need to base your choice on price (no purse-busting lox to be had) cause all sandwiches are a democratic $3.99. Chips extra.

In a pinch Potbelly is not a bad choice, particularly if you are not expecting to find a for real deli beyond the door. This is glorified fast food, assembly line style, sandwiches constructed to order right before your very eyes, a la Subway or Chipotle. The bread’s flabbiness is disguised by its being toasted to a pressed, crumb-bursting crunch and I liked that. No need to plow through cotton bread, a relief. Chili is available too, clinching the this-ain’t-no-deli deal, and also ice cream scooped into cones or cups.

The dining room does incorporate actual wood into it’s decor. That’s something. We were comfortable and the kids were happy. The lighting is not horrible, something for which to be grateful for as well. While I could not call lunch at Potbelly an adventure, I suppose there is small comfort in the fact that it is not the caloric calamity of a true deli. You ain’t gonna get no Potbelly from these modest sandwiches.

Nothing to do with sandwiches.

Friday March 16
Here I am in Parkersburg, WVA near to the Ohio border, in a hotel in the town, in an historic hotel in the town, very nice – very very nice compared to the choices, which are the Red Roof Inn, the Knights Inn and the Waffle House cause it is open all night and you can spend the night there if you can keep yourself up. Can’t remember the name of this hotel off hand (oh, the Blennerhassett), but there is a doorman and they were kind enough to give me a corporate discount even though I did not have AAA, or a corporate affiliation or military status. I tried to make something up but couldn’t so the nice young people at the desk did that for me. Plenty of travel size niceties in the bathroom, even a “shoe mitten” whatever that is and a cute sewing kit. I hope a button falls off.

Dropped my stuff in my room and went straight to the bar after a shortstop for lipstick and eyeliner. My idea was to have a glass of wine straight off and shake off a long drive in driving rain. I did and also a couple salted nuts. Then stayed for dinner cause I couldn’t stand the thought of going up and coming down again.

So… I read the menu and asked about the chef cause whoever wrote the menu was most likely not a native Parkersburger. Tip offs – tasso ham, Jack grits, …..

As I found out, tonight was the cusp, the spring menu begins tomorrow. The bartender was kind enough to share his printout of tomorrow’s menu with me. The menu and the chef’s notes for the waitstaff.

My notes on the chef’s notes:
Does Arrabiatta really mean angry?

What is a cowboy ribeye anyway?

Are lambshanks only from the front of the lamb – as he claimed? Don’t they have feet – and shanks – on the back?

Is it possible to lightly grill anything? What would be the point?

How about lightly saute? Is that with less than high heat? Why would you want
to do that?

Meyer lemons. Because of their “acidic tartness” they “work great in cooked sauces”. How come? Not to make fun. I just don’t get it.

How bout these words: microgreens, encrusted, char-grilled. We all use em, but they seem pretentious and dumb.

Primavera. A word associated with spring. Tomatoes, red onions and roasted peppers in the pasta. I don’t associate these things with spring and I don’t want to.

Provimi veal takes me back to cooking school in 1978. Who is Provimi anyway and why is Provimi good?

Don’t get me wrong. My dinner was delicious, delicious, delicious. Nice fancy greens salad tossed, penne, blazing hot in the molten middle, tender veal meatballs. Wish they would’ve made me a half order… And the hotel was a cozy, safe, comfortable oasis in a dead-downtown on a rainy-cold March night in West Virginia. I’d go back anytime for eats and sleeps.

Today Lynne Rosetto Kasper’s radio program included a segment about La Teresita, a place in Tampa, and it’s “stellar” Cuban sandwiches. This restaurant is also on the Roadfood site, the electronic roadmap to my personal food meccas. I’d like to be on staff fulltime for the Roadfood site – out in the “field”.

Where do tacos, saltenas, hamburgers, sandwiches and other wrapped foods fit on the timeline?

The stuff of which tortillas are made goes back as far as 3000 B.C.

In Mexico, the word taco is a generic term like the English word sandwich. A taco is simply a tortilla wrapped around a filling. Like a sandwich, the filling can be made with almost anything and prepared in many different ways (anything that can be rolled inside a tortilla becomes a taco). The contents of a taco can vary according to the geographical region you are eating them. The taco can be eaten as an entree or snack. They are made with soft corn or fried corn tortillas folded over.

“made by putting chopped cooked beef and chili sauce in a tortilla made of meal and flour; folded, edges sealed together with egg; fried in deep fat, chile sauce served over it.”© copyright 2004 by Linda Stradley

The origin of the hamburger is not very clear, but the prevailing version is that at the end of 1800′ s, European emigrants reached America on the ships of the Hamburg Lines and were served meat patties quickly cooked on the grill and placed between two pieces of bread.

For other bits and pieces of sandwich history, including the origins of particular wiches such as the Hot Brown, the Reuben and the Philly cheesesteak, take a peek here. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that site though – perhaps a culinary historian can certify it.

There’s a page on this site – First Cousins Once Removed – where a discussion has begun.

Susan B’s musings on tomato sandwiches – something she eats every day in the summer – make the future look bright. Read about her technique here.

How could I have been missing Max’s all these years? Yowza it’s good.

Take a look at the snap of a sandwich bigger than a head.

Please add to the groaning board. Got a favorite sandwich, sandwich joint, story, sob story, recipe, fantasy….whatever. If it fits between two pieces of bread – or one folded – it fits here.
They know the power of a pickle in Lima, Ohio. Looky here.

Who’s there?

Control freak…..
Now this is the part where you say Control Freak Who!

Like to make yer own damn sandwiches? Apparently some people think their way is the correct way. Take a look here: