So we were supposed to go to lunch with Sofia today but because we (had talked about it all week but) didn't talk about it yesterday, she texted me back after I texted her this morning to say she didn't think we were still on for lunch and was on her way to the mall.
Makes perfect sense.
Kath asks if I still want to go to lunch with her and I say yeah and she says she has to run to the Menards and I get excited because you know what's by the Menards in Saint Paul...
You didn't think we were going to close out Season Seven, Eleven Even Back Door Little Joe, without one last cameo from Season One Through Three Regular Recurring Character, Irrationally Upset Over New Arby's Menu Items Donny Osmond, did you?
But Kath gives me a look that says, "Really?" and I tell her I'll look at a map and see what is nearby, even though I want my fucking Arby's. So I open it up and I see a place called Mario's, they do pizza, and that reminds me that we've been reminding ourselves for the longest time to check out Tommie's Pizza but all Tommie's has is pizza & wings on the menu and tonight is pizza night and we're not trying to do pizza for lunch and dinner.
Mario's, however, has pizza and subs and about that: They call their subs "heroes" and the signage says Pizza, Heroes, Cold Beer.
Cold...
Beer...
That's some old school shit. That's like an ad for Virginia Slims on one page and an ad for Johnny Walker Red Label on the mirroring page in the middle a Playboy interview with John Cassavetes. Are they allowed to say they have cold beer right on the front of the building? Bars don't even say they have beer anymore. They put up a neon martini glass with neon olives in it and that's like the line. A place that says cold beer on the front... Is Gus from Mission Hill going to take my order?
I really want it to be Gus from Mission Hill.
But I look at the rest of the photos. They have a Super Mario Bros arcade cabinet. They have a Mario Lemieux poster in the men's room - or maybe it's a unisex bedroom, I didn't use it. So they have a theme but they're not going overboard with it.
And then there's the menu. It is limited in all the best ways. I didn't count them but I think they made six (very) different pies. They had four (maybe five) heroes. They had two appetizers. They had one dessert (on the menu but two desserts when we got there).
And you know what made me nut?
The walls...
They're woodgrain.
So I tell Kath and she wants to know what it's about and I show her the menu and I knew the chicken-bacon-ranch was going to get her, and it did until the description read (served cold) and she said she'd rather have a hot sandwich.
Defeated and deflated, I said I would go back to looking for a place and then I couldn't see one I was interested in so I said, "Hey, babe, I don't know, I kind of really want to go to this place."
She said OK. And that is the part of the story we could have skipped.
So let's fast forward the tape to when we actually got there. We were not served by Gus from Mission Hill but the man who took our order was pleasant and really fast - the exact opposite of the service we got from Hamburguesas El Gordo last week, which was so bad I didn't bother writing about it because it would have - look, just don't go to Hamburguesas El Gordo's 42nd & Cedar location.
DO go to Mario's because back to the point, Kath ordered the Chicken Bacon Ranch hero, hold the onions, I ordered the Italian Combo, listed on the menu as...
Mortadella, soppresatta, calabrese salami, provolone, spicy olive-pepper relish, giardiniera, iceberg, tomato, onion, chili flake, duke's mayo, stone ground mustard, Sicilian oregano
... and we got a side of Cheesy Garlic Bread Donuts, donut holes stuffed with ricotta, mozzarella, and garlic, that big homie heartily recommended with ranch dipping sauce. I got a Galactic Cowboy Imperial Stout, Kath got a San Pellegrino, we got handed a tap handle with a number on it and we took a seat near the out of order jukebox (that had what looked to be a lot of singing cowboy forty fives) and the big picture window on a bright and moderately warmer than usual October day.
I got up to check out the Super Mario cabinet and, yep, it's the NES side scroller and, yep, I'm as good as I was when I was eight years old, which is to say I got to World 1-3 and biffed it hard. But that was as much skill as looking over and seeing my partner just kind of sitting there with her San Pellegrino. So, yeah, I took a dive. Am I here to spend quality time with my partner or play a classic video game I was never good at?
Big homie brings out the Cheesy Garlic Bread Donuts. I took one bite and told Kath I felt attacked. Holy shit these were good. Really, really good. Saint Thomas is just a hop, skip, and a jump from this place; I bet Mario's murders more co-eds late at night than any eighties slasher. Just wallets emptied. Debit cards declined at Caribou the next morning. Pure filth.
And then come the heroes. I bet you want to see this thing, huh?
Just before I can get this thing in my mouth, what comes on the impeccably curated (I'm assuming) Pandora (does anybody still use Pandora?) playlist?
Daddy.
So Kath and I mime the words to each other for a line and a half and I tuck into this fucking sandwich and I just melt. Holy shit, shit is good. This is what I've been craving for months, I think maybe even over a year. A real good, well-made Italian sub - or hero in this instance. The first thing I said out loud was that the bread, a house-baked sesame roll, was perfect. Not too crusty, not too spongy, just a soft bread that wasn't trying to take centerstage or distract from the contents betwixt it.
And this provolone, please don't tell me this is Sysco provolone, it will break my heart because this provolone, along with the fattiness in the mortadella and soppresatta... my goodness, the creaminess of the fat played in harmony with the acidity of the vinegar in the relish and giardiniera and they were bound together by - who knew? - the stone ground mustard! An inspiration, this! Stone ground mustard on an Italian sub. Who would have the audacity and, more so, who would have thought that audacity would have paid off? Who knew that the mustard would play a central role in binding together the flavors of this sub? Who? Mustard on an Italian combo? That flies in the face of all -
What's this? What's on the playlist now?
What the fuck? Who is in charge here? You're telling me that in less than fifteen minutes, I have played a favorite videogame from my childhood, eaten a World Cup level appetizer, heard a monumental Rick James B A N G E R, took my first bite of the best Italian sub - sorry, hero I've had since [checks notes] [no, I actually am checking my notes] 14 August 2021, literally fourteen months and one day. Four hundred twenty seven days. And you know what? I'm not even linking back to that sandwich because I don't want to taint the memory of this sandwich while it's still fresh. You know what? Fuck that old sandwich. I wouldn't feed it to seagulls. It's shit. This sandwich, this actual hero is the future.
Where were we? Oh, yeah, and now the goddamned shiny shiny boots of leather ass Velvet Underground are on the fucking playlist? I told Kath, "We're coming back." She nodded. She was eating her sandwich.
So I pick up the second half of my sandwich, IBS be damned and...
GET THE FUCK OUT! Who the fuck is curating this playlist!?!? Who has the "Charlie's Brain" app? What the fuck are y'all doing to me?
Kath looks at my face and stops eating and asks, "What?"
And I ask if she doesn't hear the music and she says no and I wait until Bobby Womack comes in and I sing along with the "ooh"s and she smiles because she gets it. We sing along to the chorus, even, at least the first lines: ♫Across a hundred and tenth street, just trying to catch a woman that's free,♫ then ♫Across a hundred and tenth street, just [mumble mumble mumble mumBLE], oh, yeah♫
We finish our sandwiches and Kath pulls out her phone because she wants to go for a walk in a park while it's still warm - it's her way of telling me I can watch Jackie Brown next weekend when Sofia spaces on our lunch date again. And I finish up my actually-pretty-well-matched-to-my-sandwich beer (with a later-discovered "um, I'm not so sure I should have ordered this" 9% ABV) when - oh, yeah, you guessed it, another qualified banger comes on the jukebox.
For those of you keeping score at home, that playlist went:
Rick James, "Mary Jane"
The Velvet Underground, "Rock & Roll"
Bobby Womack, "Across 110th St"
Dusty Springfield, "Son of a Preacher Man"
And what do we exit to as we head over to Shadow Falls Park?
So, yes, the playlist fucks but the food was excellent. I mean, they took some pretty daring chances - Cheesy garlic donuts? And again, mustard on an Italian? But those chances worked. And what did they really do? They added a vinegar & seed based condiment to a meat and cheese sandwich. They recontextualized the cheese-stuffed bread stick into a ball-shape. We just think they're left field because we don't think "cheese snack" when we think "donut" and we've been propagandized against mustard on an Italian our whole lives. Well, nuts to that, mon frer.
I don't know how long Mario's has been in the game in Merriam Park West (marking our first Merriam Park West entry) but I just found out about it today and it was, I'm telling you, I'm begging you to believe me, the best sub I've had in fourteen months and one day. It was so good I couldn't think of other subs. Other heroes, hoagies, grinders, all of them, POOF! Gone. Wiped from memory. You need this sub, sorry, hero in your life.
Do yourself a favor and go to Mario's and give them your money. And take some quarters for the Mario cabinet.
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