Now, I can hear a number of you already balking about how it’s not a cheesesteak if it doesn’t have cheese or steak. That’s what the fucking name is, after all. And, yeah, I’m inclined to agree, o! my comrades, but it’s like this:
1. I want to try the “Italian” sub from Lucé because it has cheddar, mayo, and fucking turkey on it, just to see how it stacks up compared to “the real thing”. (Actually, I just want to try it so I can hate it but my very lovely sig-o won’t let me order it when we order Lucé together because she tells me that I should listen to myself and then I do and she’s right.) That (part before the parenthetical text) applies here, too: This cheesesteak has beaf and cheeze on it, I want to know how it compares.
2. I’m out with my very lovely sig-o who’s very excited to try this joint she just found because, for real, vegans don’t get a whole lot of “fun” stuff. Their junk food options aren’t limited except they totally are even though they aren’t. My girlfriend found a place that makes vegan nachos and she wants to go, she wants me to go with her, I want to go with her, I want her to have junk food she can eat, I want her to have a good time, I’m not going to be a dick and if you can’t understand the concept of not being a dick to your sig-o, then back the fuck up and complain about somebody else’s vegan cheesesteak experience somewhere else.
So, my old lady and I, we walk into this place. Maître d tells us it’s a seat yourself sitch. OK. We look over the menu. Sig-o wants the nachos. I spy the “Philly”, made with beaf and cheeze. OK, let’s do that. We go back up to the counter, order, I opt for fries with my cheesesteak, the sig-o gets a peanut butter cup Soyclone for desert.
We get a corner booth on lock and the food came out relatively quick. Hers came first. The nacho plate was gigantor.
Mine came next. I looked at it and wondered if I had accidentally done something like order the chycken Philly (they don’t have that, I just made it up). It looked like chicken salad.
Sig-o’s already tucking into the nachos so I assume they’re good (and we’ll get to that). Me? I take a bite of my cheesesteak and I had to give in to the salt craze that’s been all over NPR lately. It needed a lot of salt and pepper. A lot.
Over on the nacho side of things, sig-o says the cheese is too yeasty, tastes like beer to her, and the “beef crumbles” were too mushy but the chips were on point. Also, topping to chip ratio was uneven throughout.
I tried a bit of her nachos and I liked the cheese. And the “beef crumbles” were perfectly seasoned. If anything, the “nacho cheese” should have been what they put on the cheesesteak. What I had was mostly bland and had the look and consistency of hot chicken salad. The diced onions and peppers were on point, the peppers had that bold sautéed coloring but were still crisp, indicating they were done just right. The bun was also quite good. I liked the fries. She liked the fries. I finished her nachos.
The Soyclone came out and that was really good but we were already full so we didn’t get through it because we had to drive back to Minneapolis before the food comas set in.
Overall? Well, the place is cheaper than, say, Hola Arepa which, holy fuck, one of the gals in reception made a very crude joke about my bill involving a pun on their name. Also? The portions were befitting of the price tags. On the service end, our servers were cool, the maître d seemed a little harried but it was the dinner rush. As far as the food?
Well, sig-o was… You know? I don’t think I got a solid answer in terms of “overall” so you’ll have to go off what she said about her nachos. I liked them. Kind of wish I had gotten them.
My overall impression of the food? I don’t expect the vegan version of something to taste like the meat version of something.
In the car, on the way over, I told sig-o that I saw their pics on Instagram and that their hamburger (probably spelled hæmberger) patty looked like a brownie. She reminded me that it’s not supposed to taste like the real thing, it’s just supposed to taste good. I told her, yeah, I get that. And I’m just repeating that part here for you, o! my comrades, so you understand where Johnny Omnivore (aka Johnivore) is coming from: I didn’t expect a vegan cheesesteak to taste like a cheesesteak, I did, however, expect it to taste good. (Full disclosure, I did expect it to kind of look like a cheesesteak, though.) Their cheesesteak could benefit from some seasoning. A little bit of Lawry’s, a little bit of Lea & Perrin’s. Don’t have Lea & Perrin’s? Heinz will work. Something.
I’m not going to talk shit, you know that’s not how I do things unless I’m talking about a certain downtown Minneapolis sandwich shop that gives you your pickle spear in the form of three chunks in a cup and, no, I have not let that go, yet, because that was a twenty dollar sandwich after tip and they gave me my fucking pickle like it was a preschool snack before nap time.
What I will say about the food at J. Selby’s, because J. Selby’s is providing a quality service to an under served community, is that they have room for improvement, at least from an omnivore’s perspective. It was a packed house, so clearly they’re doing something right. Maybe I ordered the wrong thing or we caught them on an off night.
Head over to Saint Paul and check them out yourself, get back to me on what you think.
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