The Lunch Encounter

Do these make you grin? More here.

Wondering what to do with all that extra bacon lying around? Look deep into our culinary roots for sandwich concepts that would otherwise only come to you in an hallucination. The Gallery of Regrettable Foods may laugh at bacon and beets on bread, but hell, I ain’t afraid to admit that it sounds GOOD.

Everytime I turn around I am reading about grilled cheese sandwiches, this week in the New York Times for example.

Clementine’s in LA celebrates the grilled cheese for an entire month. Read all about it on this blog.

How do you do it? How do you like it? Add your comments here at the bottom of the page.

Thank you to Soufside from the Bottlerockets message board for calling my attention to this thrilling BBC story detailing the specifics of bacon perfection. The crossroads of mathematics and pork is a mysterious one, but Leeds University scientists have pinpointed the exact intersection. Read more here.

Ack!! Just when I thought I was sufficiently educated on bacon butties,aka bacon sandwiches, along comes Mike R to point out an even more thorough report from the New York Times on this groundbreaking bacon research.

A short tidbit follows:

Researchers at Leeds University spent more than 1,000 hours testing
700 variants on the traditional bacon sandwich, which many Britons
refer to as a bacon butty (eschewing the term sandwich, said to have
been coined to honor the fourth Earl of Sandwich’s habit of eating
meat between slices of bread around 1762).

For Britons, butties come in a variety of guises — chip butties
(French fries between slices of bread), crisp butties (ditto with
potato chips) or even sugar butties, which are self-explanatory.

Read on here, particularly if you wonder about sarnies and bangers.
There is an especially wonderful photo of a buttie, too.

although it seems we have always had plenty. As more restaurants like the Spicy Pickle move in, outfits that are less slick, less marketed and have shallower pockets are driven out.

I would say that all the sandwich joints on this site qualify as “fast casual” and are far less predictably dull than chains like Spicy Pickle and Panera. These big box restaurants are just that – big, soulless boxes. They may pose as real restaurants (as in “restorative”) but their main agenda is to part you from your money. No thank you. I’ll take my chances elsewhere, where I might get something I wasn’t expecting, good or bad. At the very least I might encounter a bit of adventure.

March 31, 2007
Ben’s Chili Bowl has been the mainstay of DC’s hotdog scene since 1958, without much competition save Hot Diggity Dog, gone since the early 80’s (or late 70’s?). Now we have M’Dawg’s, just up the hill from Ben’s. I decided to check out Ben’s competition.

Blue skies beamed on us on Friday, a school holiday. Teddy and I took advantage with a great day out. After a stroll around the tidal basin to inhale the delicate beauty of the cherry blossoms, a sloppy hot dog buried in a blanket of fixins was the sensory antithesis we needed to balance our day.

We took some snapshots and also some ketchup-coated notes.

M’Dawgs was peaceful at noon on a Friday, but I would venture a guess that it rocks on a weekend night. Also to be noted, while we loved M’Dawg’s, it is no Ben’s. You’ve got to be around for at least 50 years to achieve that kind of status.

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”.