Sikora’s Polish Market & Deli, 8 September 2018
Now, let’s back up a bit, a bit of story time.
See, back in the day, Daddy Charlie went to a bar called Mayslack’s. He knows this must have happened. The problem is that he can’t fucking remember if he was ever actually there. Did it happen? Did he go there? He must have. This was when he was dating Angie Doom, she would have totally taken him to Mayslacks because it would have given her a chance to do two things she loved: Pretending to like country music and making fun of people who like country music. So he knows he had to have been there but the memory is just a blur. (Daddy Charlie was a drinker, to paraphrase Heath Ledger’s Joker.)
Mayslack’s is also famous for their garlic roast beef, so I figured that I was in the neighborhood, may as well pop in, finally form a Mayslack’s memory, and get some Sandwich Bully fodder out of it.
I walked in, took off my messenger bag, hung it on the bar stool, sat on the stool, saw the sign behind the bar that said “$20 MINIMUM FOR DEBIT AND CREDIT”, got off the stool, picked up my bag, slung it over my shoulder, and walked back out. Wasn’t even in there long enough for the bartender to know I existed.
(Also, looking at that menu online, the sandwich is $12.95, which is, uh, no.)
So, luckily, I find myself at Sikora’s, where the sign in the window says “POLISH DOG $4″ and I say yes to that. I go inside and I have to look around for the - Where - Do I go to the counter or - What? Where - It’s back in the corner, a total self-serve sitch.
There are two buns in the plastic bag - you know, the plastic bag that buns come in - in the bread box, some sketchy looking slaw (but it’s vinegar based instead of mayo based so I might live), and then there’s a steam tank inside of which are four kielbasas that look like what happens when an old man dies at the Russian bath and nobody notices until closing time. These things are wrinkly as fuck in some murky goddamned water.
However, I have dared to eat the 12:30 AM gas station hotdog more times than a suitable number for that occurrence exists. I may live.
So, seeing as how this is being served up family picnic style, I take one of the two buns (remember that) and dress it with slaw and mustard from a yellow bottle that aside from the homemade label SPICY is nondescript, and reach into the tank to grab the least wrinkliest of the four dogs.
Yeah, there were two buns and four dogs. Who put this together? Who thought they were going to sell more unbunned than bunned dogs? It just - I mean - You can see where my brain is falling to pieces with this, right?
Fuck it, I’ve got my least wrinkly sausage at the deli which is like saying I’ve got my most fuckable sheep at the petting zoo: I’m not sure about this and I think something bad will happen to me but I’m going through with it. So, fuck it, I’ve got my least wrinkly sausage and I take it up to the register and the gal at the register rings me up and I break out my debit card and she sucks her teeth, “Ooh, we actually have a five dollar minimum.”
YOU CAN’T DO THAT! THAT’S NOT HOW SOCIETY WORKS! YOU CAN’T MAKE YOUR MINIMUM HIGHER THAN YOUR SPECIAL! IN WHAT UNIVERSE DO YOU THINK THAT’S OK! WHY WOULD YOU - WHAT THE - I MEAN COME ON!!!
… is what I wanted to say but instead I just bought a juice.
I took it to the counter and the gal said, “That’s a good choice.”
I tell her, “I just bought it because the guy on the label was smiling at me.” Which was the truth. I had no idea what the fuck it was until after I bought it and read the label: ORANGE & APPLE & LEMON JUICE.
I take a seat outside, the only seating provided and I bite into my dog and… This was the blandest dog I’ve… Well, that’s a bit hyperbolic but, Jesus, where was the salt? the fat? the garlic? It was totally uninspiring.
The bun was thicc and fluffy without being airy, the mustard was spicy, the coleslaw provided no crunch or sweetness or tang. Kind of bummed but I lost only four beans.
The Cardinal, 10 September 2018
So I pop in, they’ve got Game Show Network on TV and Hamm’s on tap. Guy behind the counter asks what he can get me, I tell him I’m in for a bite of lunch. He starts listing off the specials as he grabs me a menu - starting with goulash because who doesn’t want goulash when it’s eighty fucking degrees out? - and I look in the menu while he’s still rattling things off and I see “Cheeseburger $6.95″ and you aint got to tell me nothing else, hoss. A $6.95 cheeseburger? In Minneapolis?
This is the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the eight dollar cheeseburgers flow. You’re undercutting every other burger stand in town?
Let’s fucking do this.
And I’ll take a fucking Hamm’s because Hamm’s.
I had my choice of grilled or raw onions. I chose grilled and I’ll tell you they were absolutely the ronin of this Japanese epic poem - Well, no, wait. Did the Japanese do epic poetry? I know the Romans and the Greeks did but what about - Because, see, even haiku are just about nature and shit. (Speaking of, I saw so many hummingbirds today. That was cool.) But those are short. Did they do epic, like, narrative poetry?
OK, so, new analogy.
The grilled onions were the true murderer whose mask is removed to reveal a severe facial disfigurement in this borderline softcore pornographic blood-soaked giallo, adding sweetness to an otherwise bog-standard cheeseburger.
The other characters included female witness frantically trying to convince the police to listen to her played by the annatto and sodium heavy American cheese; the boorish but dashing swimsuit photographer on assignment from London who sees something “telling” in the background of his photos played by the beef patty, and the police detective that is holding onto everybody’s passports until this nonsense is sorted out played by the top bun and his partner who might be too close to the murderer himself because of his wife’s work at the asylum played by the bottom bun.
Sorry, haven’t made one of my pop culture analogies lately and I like doing that so I went overboard. You don’t like it? Fuck off to a different sandwich blog.
Anyway, reflecting on the sandwich later on my bike ride, I knew what was off about it: They don’t season their meat. Or at least it didn’t taste like it, which is why I needed to pull in support players like the Simmons girl, the one they found in the park, she was here from America played by salt and Nannette, the French model, here with the photographer fellow who the police are looking at as the prime suspect played by pepper. It would have helped if they seasoned their meat a little more generously.
Oh, and also there was the female witness’s murdered-in-the-third-act prankster and scene-girl roommate played by catsup and the sleazy night club owner who winds up dead in the second act by knife in the back but the police call it mysterious causes played by mustard.
OK, I’m done.
It wasn’t a bad burger, it wasn’t a burger that made me want to shout to the heavens, either. I’ve had better burgers *cough* much better burgers *cough* but considering that the only other restaurant options right on the Blue Line are the McDonald’s four blocks south and across the street and there’s not even a LRT stop there and then the Burger King another five blocks south and across the street but with a stop a block north, the Cardinal, for being on a LRT stop, for being on the same side of the street as the tracks, and for not being a McD’s or BK, yes, by default, is the best food for Light Rail Riders. And it’s cheap, too. Not compared to the BK dollar menu which I think they call a value menu because - actually I don’t know why they do that.
I got out of the Cardinal with a cheeseburger and a beer for ten bucks before tip. Go give them your money.
Wait, no. Don’t do that. Don’t give them your ten dollars.
Give me your ten dollars.
I wrote a book. It’s about fried chicken sandwiches.
At times.
Mostly it’s about porn.
And drugs.
And murder.
Buy it here: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/batpussy-charlie-pauken/1129374780?ean=9781538094839
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