A Fancy Bologna Sandwich from Au Cheval
I grew up eating bologna sandwiches. I still eat bologna sandwiches. My kids eat ’em. My wife has better taste than us, and good for her. But bologna sandwiches are a pretty typical Midwestern American thing. They’re as basic as basic gets, but our urge to “chef everything up” cannot be stopped. Chicago can even make a bologna sandwich fancy, apparently.
There’s a restaurant a few blocks from my office called Au Cheval that’s billed as an “upscale diner.” Their burger is pretty consistently named one of the best in the city, or even the country, but they’re also known for their fried bologna sandwich, featuring house-made mortadella. Oscar Mayer may have a way with B-O-L-O-G-N-A but I figured this was a sandwich that should be featured on the Tribunal. Since we’re covering bologna sandwiches this month, it was time to pull the trigger.
The bologna sandwiches that I eat at home come in three basic variants. There’s the cold bologna sandwich; 2 slices of bologna, 1 slice of American cheese, Miracle Whip* and mustard on whatever supermarket bread you have around. There’s the hot bologna sandwich, which takes the basic 2 slices of bologna & either 1 or 2 slices of American cheese on supermarket bread and puts them in the microwave long enough to melt the cheese. And there’s the fried bologna sandwich.
In my house growing up, we’d use 2-3 slices of bologna for a fried bologna sandwich. We’d cut each slice in half, then cut a small slit into the cut side to keep the bologna from curling up like a soup bowl once it hits the griddle. We’d brown the bologna pretty thoroughly to crisp it up, and stack the slices in alternating directions on buttered (but not toasted) bread. We’d use cheese sometimes, but more often than not we wouldn’t. The fried bologna sandwich of my childhood (and occasionally adulthood as well) was about fat, salt, and texture, and melted cheese throws off that balance. Au Cheval’s fried bologna sandwich, however, isn’t concerned with balance.
* On Miracle Whip: OK. I know. I get it. Miracle Whip is the devil. But much like I grew up calling margarine “butter” and not knowing any better, I grew up calling Miracle Whip “mayonnaise.” I don’t really ever use it on its own anymore, but a roughly 1:1 combination of Miracle Whip and mustard, whether mixed together in an egg salad or in discrete layers in a bologna sandwich, is a direct link to my childhood.
I arrived at Au Cheval at noon on a rainy Tuesday in December to find a line of people out the door. Sensing defeat, I stepped inside and asked if they had room for one, and it turns out they did have one empty seat at the counter. Au Cheval uses an open kitchen, like many diners, and seats people either at a counter along the kitchen or at one of the tables along the wall. I found myself seated at a metal rail, separated by stacks of steel gravy boats from a prep station where a tattooed girl was carefully arranging fried eggs and mornay sauce atop plates stacked full of fries. Farther along the kitchen were people working a griddle and doing salad prep. Servers and bus staff bustled around outside the kitchen.
I waited nearly 10 minutes for someone to take my order, but the time was well spent watching the kitchen staff. It was really a tight operation–each person knew their station and the one next to them, so when, for example, the grillman left to get something from storage, salad prep took over the left half of the grill and the fry station took over the right. They weren’t perfect–I saw the fry station discard an egg she’d overcooked, distracted–but they were definitely in sync.
I ordered the fried bologna sandwich, some of those excellent-looking fries I’d seen prepped (without the egg and cheese sauce though), and Quittin’ Time, a wheat porter from One Trick Pony Brewing, a small brewery in the south suburbs not too far from my home who I knew was doing great work. I settled in with the beer and watched the kitchen working while I waited for my lunch. I watched piles of bologna hitting the grill, buckets of fries being dropped, buns being buttered and broiled. It really is an excellent kitchen for spectating.
The fries came first–a paper cone of crisp, fresh-cut, twice-fried beauties, thicker than the frites you usually get in a cone but what of it? These were excellent fries, salted well, and served with a garlic aioli that also was fairly salty. I don’t hate that though, I want my fries salty, and I won’t eat ketchup on my fries, so aioli is a nice treat. As I get older though, I get more sensitive to excessive saltiness, and they maybe could have laid off just a touch. Still, the fries were outstanding.
Lookit these fries
The fries hadn’t been on the counter for a minute though when the sandwich loomed into view.
Cue ominous music
That’s… a big damn sandwich. And I knew it would be, I was expecting it, and yet still I was a bit taken aback. I was so stunned that I forgot to unwrap my napkin before taking the first bite. If only members of the national Dairy industry had happened to be there at that moment. They might have been inspired to do a “Got Melted Cheese?” campaign. I could have been famous.
I had anticipated that this sandwich would split the difference between the hot/melty of my microwaved sandwiches and the crispness of my fried bologna sandwiches but despite some very nice browning on the bologna and even on the cheese, it hewed far closer to the former. Two bites in, I was feeling full.
Needs more brown bits
The bun was substantial enough to contain the mass of meat, but overall there wasn’t enough textural difference to overcome the soft fattiness of the bologna, melted cheese and mayonnaise, though the crisp and plentiful fries helped me space out those bites. The bologna itself was delicious, intensely porky with a finish that kept me chasing a subtle lingering herbal flavor in my head, but I felt like the sandwich needed some kind of acidic component to counter the barrage of fat and salt. The included pickle wedge went some way toward combating that; a guy next to me at the counter had the great idea to order a bowl of house-made bread & butter pickles instead of fries with his bologna sandwich. That might have helped. The mayonnaise supposedly had some dijon in it but any flavor it added was flying under the radar and I would have preferred a straight dose of pungent yellow mustard without the additional fat.
I left feeling that this was more of a stunt meal than a well-thought-out sandwich. Perhaps that’s a harsh judgement on something of such high quality. The bologna was delicious, the bun substantial and well-griddled, the cheese melty, and the overall package looked exactly like what I’ve seen in other writeups. The execution seems to have been spot on. This sandwich is probably exactly what they were shooting for. But overall it seemed like the whole was less than the sum of its parts, and continued being so well past when I should probably have run out of sandwich to eat. I did finish it and I don’t regret trying it. I’d love to try this bologna though on some simple untoasted white bread, cold, with a slice of deli American. And maybe some mustard.
I like sandwiches.
I like a lot of other things too but sandwiches are pretty great
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