I seen a place that I hadn’t been to yet. Allie’s Deli & Catering.
Well, it has the word “deli” in it, let’s check the menu.
GGGoooddd, nnnooo, fuck you and soup! I don’t want soup!
But say it like this.
I don’t want soup! I want a sandwich. Why do you have so much soup, anyway!?
And salad!? No.
And then finally, specialty sandwiches.
Scrolling, scrolling.
Bam! Reuben.
It’s on.
So I go over to the Rand Building, climb these fancy Tim Burton Gotham City stairs, turn the corner, and, holy shit, the place is jumping for a Tuesday. I’m half-tempted to leave. But I see the Reuben on the menu and the whole sandwich is $6.21 before tax. (I forget what the half sandwich cost.) So, I’m committed. Also, for being jumping, they moved bodies, boy. I think that from the time I got in line to the time I placed my order was less than a minute. From the time I placed my order to the time I got it in my hand was less than five. From the time I got my order to the time I got to the register was maybe one minute. They moved bodies.
The whole staff is smiling, they help me out with the quickness, deduce by my helmet that I’m getting it to go, and kicked in a pickle for me. Nice people.
I get to the register, tell this cat I got a whole Reuben, and he runs my card and he says to me - and check the fuck out of this shit out - “You could’ve gone anywhere today [looks at my card], Charles, but you came here and we appreciate that.”
Holy shit, that’s some customer appreciation.
So I bring my sandwich back to the office.
It was good but it was a little lopsided. Kind of like… OK. Here we go. First of all, the sauerkraut was healthy dog nose cold. The rest of the sandwich is hot, the sauerkraut is cold. Not a big deal. I can taste a whole lot of swiss cheese on one half of my sandwich but not a lot on the other. Not a big deal, usually you can’t even taste the swiss on a Reuben. (And, again, given how fast they were moving, my sandwich being just a little crooked is to be expected a little.) Thousand Island added a hint of sweetness and they use pumpernickel instead of rye which isn’t that radical of a deviation.
The star attraction of this sandwich, what makes up for all of the slight not-big-deals, is the meat. Hot, lean, medium thick slices of off-the-fucking-brisket corned beef. Holy shit, this was not Sysco meat (if it was, it was from a Sysco brisket which, while bland sounding, still sounds more enjoyable than a disco biscuit), this was off a whole, slow-cooked brisket and it was - OK, not phenomenal but, Jumpin’ Jehoshephat, my total came out under seven bucks and I got to eat real animal flesh and that’s in the part of town where everywhere you look, you’re getting Sysco meat for eight and change and that’s not with a side. My shits came with a pickle spear*.
So, real animal flesh, a complimentary pickle, under seven dollars? I can forgive a little lopsided assembly and cold sauerkraut. Fuck, for those reasons, I can call cold sauerkraut a delicacy that you don’t understand, stupid American asshole. How about you get a passport sometime and go to Zanzibar and eat some shark, you fucking myopic nationalist. Expand them horizons. You need to take baby steps? Shit, go to Allie’s Deli and order the Reuben. They put the sauerkraut on cold like they do in [insert European country here].
I’ll be going back.
Oh, and Allie’s also wins big points with me because their turkey variant of the Reuben? They call that a Rachael. The way it’s supposed to be. It’s like they get me.
* B*wiched is still on notice for that little cup of pickle chunks. What are you thinking, B*wiched?
Comments
Post a Comment