Last night was my turn to pick and Kath asked what I wanted for dinner. I told her I was torn between El Taco Loco in Columbia Heights and this place I just found out about, JC's Subs in Saint Louis Park. I told her I'd been looking at it and they say they do free delivery and the site isn't a Door Dash or Grub Hub portal and it'd be nice to not order pickup for once. So we looked over the menu and Kath settled on a Cubano with jalapeño chips and a Diet Coke, I got the pastrami with two tater salad cups and a grapefruit Izzy's. The total order earned us an automatic ten percent off coupon and I submitted the order - and Kath asks me if I included a tip and I showed her the receipt like, "How are you going to ask me that?" and the site said it would be at my apartment in twenty five minutes.
Kath and I laughed at that. Twenty five minutes? Sure, maybe it'll be twenty five minutes when it leaves for delivery. OK. Twenty five minutes, guy. Sure.
So we dicked off for a minute when I looked at the clock and said in a doofy voice, "Oh, shit, it's going to be here in two minu-"
My phone rings.
Kath and I look at each other.
I answer the phone.
It's the delivery driver from JC's. No doubt he's about to tell me he's just now leaving with my ord- Nope. Nope, he's pulling up right now.
Kath and I are perplexed.
I mask up and go downstairs and this guy pulls up in a car with the JC's Subs logo on the side - when the last time you saw that? I'm not even sure Domino's does that anymore outside of their commercials and that shit was iconic back in the eighties.
Dude pops out of the car, hands me my order, gets back in his car, and disappears into the pre-vernal evening.
I get back up to the apartment to find Kath sitting at the table and I tell her, "They had their own logo on the car."
Kath isn't as impressed by that as I am and we sit down to our meals. I'm thinking my pastrami looks a little small. There's the catch. I unwrap and, no, it's just been pressed. There's a butt-ton of pastrami in there.
The entire time we're eating, Kath and I can't get over it: They said they'd deliver from Saint Louis Park to Minneapolis, a thirteen minute drive, in twenty five minutes, and they did it in twenty three. You understand this math, right? They received, made, packed, and delivered an order in twenty three minutes from a suburb to midtown during the ass end of Friday night rush hour. Kath pointed out very eloquently last night, "Jimmie John's down the street takes forty five minutes!"
Jimmie John's is literally three blocks from my apartment and, yes, it takes them forty five minutes to get here.
We started trying to figure this out. Were we the only order they had? Was the driver doing eighty? How the fuck did you receive, complete, pack, and deliver this to us in twenty five minutes?
While we were raving about how good the food was (we're getting to that), with Kath pointing out that they even got everything in our order right, Kath asked, "Are they new? Because I don't want another Lu's situation."
Yes, Lu's. The once mighty banh mi joint that grew so quickly from quiet hidden secret spot you had to be cool enough to know someone who would tell you about it, that quiet little secret place where you could get three banh mi for ten dollars to the now two-locations-and-a-truck Vietnamese Subway that charges eight dollars a sandwich. Lu's, who had the best French fries in the Twin Cities and then said, "Fuck it," and just... didn't, anymore. Lu's, homophonous with "lose", one of the great heartbreaks of my thirties and, yes, that includes Brenda Lee Foster.
I'm just kidding. There is no Brenda Lee Foster. It just sounded too good to not say.
So I look up JC's Subs and found they're new-ish. About a year or so old.
Kath and I shared one of those glances that said, "We can always hope..." because it would be a shame if JC's Subs went the way of Lu's, and Lu's used to be so ass-jigglingly bonkers that I can hardly restrain myself from going on my three thousandth tear about them. This isn't about them, this is about JC's.
GREAT, SO TELL US HOW THE FUCKING SANDWICH WAS, CHARLIE.
Are you looking at that picture at the top? That is lean rare pastrami. Like just a fucking pile of it, between two slices of caraway rye. It was hot when it got here (because it was born only twenty three minutes earlier, don't know if I mentioned that) and the bread was only barely starting to dampen from being trapped in the steam thanks to secure wax paper and foil wrapping. Now, the caraway rye complimented the salt and savory of the meat with the coarse ground mustard giving a little sweetness for balance and my only complaint, as always, is I couldn't taste the cheese. It seemed like it didn't need to be there. If it were omitted, I wouldn't notice its absence.
The pastrami seemed to be chipped and I was able to bite right through almost like... Isn't there some restaurant that has a "butter knife test" for their steaks? That's kind of like this. If I were some kind of insane mutant, I could have origami'd the bread into a cup and ate the pastrami with a spoon, like pudding. Maybe gelatin. Something tells me animal flesh would jiggle more like gelatin than pudding. I mean, hey, I know they're both animal by-products but I just think that chipped hot pastrami would jiggle on a spoon more like gelatin than pudding.
Anyway, it was good. Real good.
And my potato salad? Holy shit, I think I've found the first place in Minnesota that doesn't add some kind of sugar or sweetener to their goddamned potato salad. (I swear, these fucking Minnesotans sometimes...) Now, this isn't my mom's potato salad, they'd have to hit the Plochman's a tad harder and my mom doesn't hit the Plochman's that hard in the first place. (My second ex insisted I go overboard on the Plochman's like her mom did and that was the first and last time I listened to a fucking thing she had to say about potato salad.) And they could def go a lot harder on the paprika, as in, "some, in the first place" but it was just such a relief to find a place with unsweetened potato salad that I'll forgive the lack of paprika and turmeric.
Oh and check this out: The hot stuff stayed hot and the cold stuff stayed cold. It's a wonder what happens when you get your order in twenty three minutes.
But, man, again, that sandwich. Fuck me sideways. Like literally. Scissor me. Holy shit that was a good sandwich. I got through the first half of the sandwich and one of my two tater salad cups and said, I'm only halfway done and I want to order them again.
Kath agreed that we would order them again, perplexed as we both were over the magic they pulled off. I would encourage you to order them, too. Sandwiches hover around the ten dollar mark, sides and drinks live between the dollar and two dollar neighborhoods. They have their own delivery guy with their own delivery car and a seven mile delivery range so there's no upcharge on the items and no cockamamie seven dollar delivery fee. You'd be supporting a local business that's doing fantastic work with sandwiches and bucking the third party delivery apps (I still haven't forgiven the Door Dasher who stole my Diet Coke and lied to my damned face about it a year ago.) Go on. Go give them your money.
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