So you work somewhere where one of the security guys looks like Clarence Boddicker but smaller and he's alright, it turns out, he's never asked you if you could fly before throwing you out of a van. He likes a good Cubano, he sees your Fender t-shirt and asks if you're a Fender man and tells you his first guitar was a BC Rich, and one day he tells you about the Reuben at Surdyk's, the liquor store with the cheese shop and there's also a deli and then about a week later he asks you if you've tried it yet and then one day your old lady comes over and asks if you're hungry and asks if you want to get something to eat and you remember that homie at work told you about this Reuben and you ask her if she wants to make the trek up to Northeast to go to a liquor store deli to grab a Reuben and she says yes.
I mean maybe that doesn't happen to you but that's what Kath and I did last night.
Surdyk's is one of those liquor stores where the staff wear collared shirts and aprons, not like the liquor store I worked at where the guys generally wear Vikings gear and there was one woman who wore yoga pants with Miley Cyrus heads all over them and you have to physically haul some drunk out of the store once every two to three months, a little more often in the summer, less often in the winter. Yeah, Surdyk's is not that place. Surdyk's has a fucking cheese shop.
And I mean they have a cheese shop. Like just big honkin' wheels of imported stuff. Expensive stuff. Stuff you have to think about, ask questions about. They have cheese that requires assistance. And they have the staff there to assist you. Every couple minutes, somebody would pop over and ask if we needed help and we'd say we were just waiting for our sandwiches. I never once felt unattended to or that my business wasn't welcome.
I mean it's serious business.
So I was kind of dismayed that the Reubens appear to be half pre-made.
Kath and I were wondering if we should split one or each get our own so we asked one of the deli counter attendants how big they were and he said he could show us and he brought out from the walk-in two slices of brown rye bread on top of one another, on top of the top one was corned beef, cheese, and sauerkraut. I have to let this slide because I know it's just part of prep work.
I tell him we'll take two, he says it'll be about six to seven minutes, Kath looks at cheeses and I find the mustard sampler. Didn't care for the basil mustard but I liked the walnut mustard.
I was also dismayed by the lack of potato salad in the joint. I mean there was one potato salad and that was called the French potato salad. I'm eating the leftovers now so I can tell you what's in it:
Yukon potatoes, olive oil, capers (?) (OK), parsley, chives, red onion, vinegar, salt.
Me, I'm that guy who just wants some boiled cubed taters with some salt & pepper in a bath of Hellman's and Plochman's with some celery and hard boiled egg, topped generously with paprika. Let me get in on that. The French potato salad? It was OK but not what I think of when I think of potato salad. I mean it was a salad of potatoes, so, yes, it was potato salad.
But how was the Reuben, Charlie?
Well, the first thing I noticed was something tasted off but not bad off, just... you know, off. Took me a few more bites to figure out they had included mustard on their Reuben, just like Kramarczuk's does literally down the block. Like two units over. Like there's Kramarczuk's, New Bro-hemia, University Ave, and Surdyk's. So I suspect the mustard thing is probably a criss-cross of the two places rather than a neighborhood convention. But the comparison stops at the mustard.
See, the 'czuk's Reuben has a .500 batting average with me. I had it once and it was great, I had it a second time and swore I'd never get it again. One time the meat was juicy, succulent, moist, the second time it was dry and burnt. One time the sauerkraut was at an appropriate temperature for a hot sandwich, the second time it was cold.
But we're not here to talk about 'czuk's, we're here to talk about 'dyk's and 'dyk's Rube...
Well, the corned beef was stacked on rather than draped or shingled but that's not a big deal and it was a good cut of corned beef, nice and flavorful and moist. Kath, who admitted that this was the first Reuben she'd ever had outside of where she works, said the bread was really good, I found it appropriately spongey. But what I really liked about this sandwich was that they melted Swiss cheese on both sides of the sandwich, creating that all-important barrier that prevents the bread on both sides of the sandwich from getting soggy as fuck. It works, too. We grabbed our sandwiches to go and it took maybe ten minutes to drive back to my place and the bread was not soggy. I have been preaching this shit for years: You have a sandwich with some wet-ass sauerkraut and some soupy-ass Thousand Island and you're not going to put a barrier between that and the bread? No. Fuck you.
But Surdyk's, who love you and care about you, melt the cheese on both sides of the sandwich like civilized members of a society who don't want your sandwich getting soggy as fuck.
Now is this the best Reuben in Minneapolis? Well, no. Is it in the top five? Mm... Maybe, actually, yeah. Problem, however, is that there is a lot of space between those top five. 333 is gone and that was the kind of the one everybody aspired to. Tiny and Colossal are two very hard to beat contenders. Ginger Hop sneaks in with a kimchi variation. Tootie's is very much worth going out of your way for. I mean with these four, Surdyk's would be in fifth place but look at the company it's keeping. I've had every Carl Buddig fuckup to ever get hurled at me by some apathetic whisker-chinned teenager, I can tell you some fucking stories, man, and I can tell you it's a lot harder to pick who goes in sixth place rather than fifth because that is a vveerryy steep drop-off. Conversely, going from sixth to fifth is a very steep climb and Surdyk's just kind of nudges in there effortlessly.
I do have to dock points because our sandwiches didn't come with pickle spears but I have to re-add those points because Kath dropper her sandwich on the couch and nothing happened. It was a very sturdy sandwich.
Go give them your money.
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