My Weekend In Sandwiches–August 25, 2014
Chorizo hash and white cheddar omelet
Though I had a fantastic breakfast on Saturday (Mezcal chorizo from Publican Quality Meats in Chicago mixed into a crispy potato hash with caramelized onions and a white cheddar omelet. Jealous yet?), it was not a banner weekend for sandwiches. I have a few to report though.
The Toasty Cheese truck
Friday night after work I headed to Church Street Brewing Company in Itasca, IL for some beers. Joe brews some great lagers and gives a good, informative tour, and I can’t recommend highly enough that you head out there for a visit.
Often, on a Friday they’ll have a food truck outside the brewery. This was no exception and Toasty Cheese was there. I’ve had good sandwiches from them before, notably the Great Dane. This time I went for the Big Blue, which is “Grass-fed ribeye, Blue cheese, red onions and baby arugula with lemon balsamic on a toasty pretzel roll.”
Toasty Cheese’s Big Blue
It wasn’t a bad sandwich. But it lacked a bit in execution I guess. If I’m getting steak on a sandwich, I want the steak to have some visible charring/browning, not to be uniformly gray. And if I’m getting bleu cheese on a sandwich, I want the bleu cheese to be intense rather than bland and melty. The arugula was OK I guess, and I can’t say I noticed the lemon balsamic. Also, if I were to use an adjective to describe that pretzel roll, toasty isn’t the one I’d use. Check out the sheen on that thing.
Saturday I was invited to a neighbor’s father’s birthday party. Pat’s not a bad old guy, bit of a ladies’ man, likes to have pretty girls around him, so I’m fairly sure it was my wife who was really invited but she was nice enough to bring me along. They had a lot of the typical Chicago-area potluck dishes in evidence, caterers pans of mostaciolli (skipped it), party-cut cheese pizzas (decent), fried chicken (excellent, even cold), various potato dishes and salads and whatnot. And at one end of the table, a nearly-picked-through crockpot of thinly sliced beef in jus (which we in Chicago call “gravy”). What there wasn’t, was giardiniera.
A selfie with Pat
Who serves Italian beef sandwiches without giardiniera? An octegenarian on his birthday I guess, or the family who put together the spread for him. But the beef wasn’t bad, and the gravy was spicy enough that they might have added giardiniera directly to it. So I’ll forgive. Also, hey, free food. I did not get any pictures of the sandwich but I did get a selfie with the birthday boy.
Who wouldn’t want to drink their Bloody Mary though a sausage straw?
Sunday was my company picnic at Arlington Park, the horse racing track, where we had our own tent with food & beverages & betting computers, of course. Wouldn’t want to make us have to walk all the way to the grandstands to throw money away. Anyway, I skipped the betting and mostly only drank ginger ale, but I did have to have a bloody mary with a sausage straw.
The food was pretty middle-of-the-road catered picnic fare but I was able to put together a fairly decent Chicago dog.
PROTIP: if they don’t have celery salt by the hot dog condiments, look at the bloody mary bar
PROTIP: I’ve figured out what potato salad is for. It’s ballast for your plate on a windy day, or if you’re sitting directly in front of a powerful fan because it’s ridiculously hot outside. Under no circumstances should you actually attempt to eat it. Unless it’s German potato salad.
Chicago dog at Arlington Park
So the bun wasn’t poppy seed, and the relish wasn’t neon green. I think those particular requirements are relatively fungible. The bun wasn’t steamed either, and that’s a bigger problem, but I was pleasantly surprised that they provided a decent, snappy, natural-casing dog. I ate two of them.
After we got back home from Arlington Park, my neighbor and I visited One Trick Pony Brewery in Lansing, IL, had a few beers, bullshitted with Dave, and got to see a bit of the new, bigger space they’re moving into shortly (I’ve been asked not to share the pictures I took there yet, but it looks like it’ll be nice). I didn’t have any sandwiches there, but I did end the weekend the way I began it, drinking some excellent locally-brewed beer.
How was your weekend? Any sandwiches of note?
I like sandwiches.
I like a lot of other things too but sandwiches are pretty great
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