The Simple Sandwich, 14 April 2017

I’ve been sticking to the usual lately, brown-bagging more often, partly to save money but really because I’m just over the downtown MPLS food scene. But the USPS guy told me yesterday about this joint called the Simple Sandwich. Well, I had a sandwich the day before, so I had pizza yesterday. Today, though, I looked up the Simple Sandwich’s menu and they have a Reuben and, well, you know how that goes.
So I saunters up to the counter, I does, and I order a Reuben to go, yeah, I’ll make it a combo, yada yada yada, and I get to watch the guy make my sandwich.
He starts by slathering on a generous schmear of thousand island on both slices, throws on a couple slices of pastrami on each slice of bread, tops each of those off with Swiss cheese, tosses it in a toaster oven, starts up on the next Reuben, takes my Reuben out of the toaster oven, slathers on some hot sauerkraut, puts the two sides together, sticks the fucker in a panini press, pulls it out, wraps it up, puts it in a bag, looks at me, asks, “Uh, the, uh, you have the -”
I say, “Reuben combo?”
He hands me the bag and says, “Have a nice day.”
OK, so the place is clean and brightly lit, kitchen guy is a little exhausted because, as the boss on the register told me, they were running two short, the boss is nice but frustrated, it’s catty corner from work, how is the food?
Honestly, for what it is, they could knock a dollar off, a buck fifty. The meat and cheese I could’ve gotten from the deli counter at Cub (which makes sense since they say their stuff is “homemade”) and while the cheese was ample, there could’ve been more meat. The rye is supposed to be a caraway rye but there was no caraway flavor. However, they didn’t hold back on the thousand island like some of the other downtown sandwich joints including one with a pickle cup that omits the thousand island entirely. And the sauerkraut was playing a supporting role in this picture rather than starring.
So, yeah, I could tell this was on the Sysco end of things but it wasn’t bad. It was pretty good, really, but just pretty good. I’m not raving about it, I’m not in a hurry to go back there, but I don’t feel like I got ripped off and the food was palatable. I would go there again before I ran out of other options. I’d probably go there before I went to Max’s Cafe again and I’d probably definitely go there before I went back to that place with the pickle cup and the not-actually-a-Reuben. I think it’s overpriced by a buck or so but I’m not going to bitch about a dollar. Overall, the sandwich lived up to the name of the place.