Dagwood’s, 20 July 18

I don’t want to talk shit about Dagwood’s which is across the street from the office, seeing as how I sometimes get breakfast there and I’ve enjoyed the “Dagwood Special” ( ham, pastrami, salami, Sysco cheese, lettuce, tomato, mayo). Got breakfast there this morning, saw on their marquee something that looked like an Italian sausage sandwich with peppers and onions and mushrooms under a bunch of melted cheese and I thought, “I want that fucking thing.”
So I went back for lunch after perusing the menu and some internal debate over whether I should get the Italian Chicken or the Mama Mia Special (which is what I saw on the board). I broke down and Googled “chicken vs Italian sausage” because, you know, doctor shit.

Pictured: A thing my old dying ass has to do for the rest of my old dying life, which I hope is fucking short and every breath I take is one closer to the one I take with my head in the oven.

“Become die.”

Anyway, the choice was pretty clear: No carbs, a quarter of the fat, and fifty percent more protein. Have to go with chicken.
So I go back across the street and order the Italian chicken sandwich and I get salad instead of chips and I wait for a few minutes and I see Katya is in a new movie or something but I’m not trying to bump my phone in a restaurant so I left it on mute and there weren’t any subtitles so I’m not really sure, so -
“Number ten!?”
I step over. “Number ten.”
I grab my order and come back across the street and -
Huh? It’s… Whole? I mean I’m not a toddler, I don’t need my mommy to cut my sandwich in half for me but, shit, this is, uh… Huh.
OK, so I cut it in half my damned self. Had they always just not cut it in half and I’m just now noticing? I mean it’s just weird.
I commence to eating and here’s where the shit talk ought to begin but I don’t know where to start. See, there wasn’t enough chicken but the chicken tasted like shit. So do I complain that it was straight out of a can unseasoned or that there wasn’t enough of this thing that didn’t taste very good? Sure, the low quantity of the low quality meat explains why I got a sandwich and a salad for six beans but, shit, come on. This was… man. At least season the fucking meat. Even if you can’t be arsed to use salt and pepper, they make that shit premixed. Lawry’s, Morton, McCormick, hell, even Old Bay. Yes. Old Bay. On chicken. Going on an Italian sandwich. It would still be an improvement over the, you know, no seasoning on this chicken.
The marinara? Look, I don’t expect a skyway deli to make their sauces daily by hand. I get that shopping Sysco is how they keep costs down. But, Jesus Christ, Sysco is the world’s largest food service distributor, they have to have a marinara that doesn’t taste like cane sugar. For real, this tasted like the santorum after a jar of Prego got butt fucked by a Mexican Coke and that’s not racist, thank you.
You can’t convince me that the peppers or mushrooms made any contact with butter or oil in a skillet and - I’m not even mad about this next part, just perplexed by it - do they slice their onions by setting their mandoline to “shave”? It’s fucking weird.
The cheese was melted. That’s the nicest thing I can say about this sandwich.
The salad was mostly big white chunks of Kafe Nasty’s culinary side-ho, iceberg lettuce under a blanket of finely diced maters, those weird onion shavings, and an angrily applied fistful of white cheese with a little cup of Italian dressing on the side. It’s a side salad, I can’t complain. I wasn’t expecting a Betty’s Salad. (From what I understand, that’s a Toledo thing, you might have to Google that.) (You know? Now that I think of it, I haven’t seen Betty’s Salad on a menu anywhere around this motherfucker.)
Look, go to Dagwood’s. Their cold sandwiches are decent, comparable to Jimmy John’s in terms of what you get for what you pay, but you’re supporting local business. That’s a good thing. Their hot sandwiches, though - rather, their Italian chicken. Let’s keep things honest, I had only the one hot sandwich, that doesn’t represent all their hot sandwiches, but the one I had was fucking lame. Sorry, Dag, it just wasn’t good. The mushrooms, onions, and peppers need to be sautéed, additionally, you need to ease up on that mandoline and slice the onions a bit thicker. (Thicc Onions is my new favorite rapper.)
The quality of the marinara needs turned up. Right now it’s down by Prego or Ragu and is just awful. I need to have something at least at a Newman’s Own level.
And I get it, I swear I do, this is a skyway deli, we’re going to be dealing with canned meat. They are not going to have a half dozen birds kickin’ it on a rotisserie for a whole shift. That results in waste and waste is expensive. So, yeah, canned meat is a necessity to this joint’s continued existence. You know what would help, though?

A fuckin’ forty ounce! Season your goddamned meat, people, cripes!

So, there it is. Got to talk some shit. You can’t tell but somewhere in the middle of this thing I got up and took a shit. It’s all good. It’s all love. Dagwood’s has one subpar - OK, bad menu item. I will say right now that this is a bad sandwich from an otherwise good deli. You have me on record saying that plainly now.
Further the witness sayeth naught.