A Tale Of Two (Huge) Sandwiches: Part The First

You know what's good? Sandwiches. Sure, a fancy meal is awesome every now and then, but sandwiches are delicious and filling and generally quite affordable. Honestly, I think the greatness of sandwiches is so universally acknowledged that I don't even need to say anything more on the subject.

A few weeks ago I found myself in Atlantic City for the 2011 ECAC Men's Hockey Tournament. The outcome of the games... well, we don't really need to talk about that. But I was happy to be down there because it gave me an opportunity to try out the White House Sub Shop. If you're not familiar with it, the White House is a famous deli not far from Trump Plaza (which, by the way, has free self-parking just a couple of blocks away) that's been turning out huge, awesome, cheap sandwiches for decades, and has the yellowed celebrity photos on the wall to prove it. You can't read a review of the White House without hearing stories of how people stop there on the way out of town to buy a bunch of sandwiches to take home, or have them delivered by courier, or how Frank Sinatra reportedly had a bunch shipped to his movie sets. So, I had to give it a try.

I had read stories of people waiting in line for an hour or more at the White House, but my arrival was conveniently in the lull between lunch and dinner and there were only a couple of people in line ahead of me. Once my number was called, I gave my order to the sandwich-maker (who called me "Chris" because apparently I look like a guy named Chris): a half tuna and a half White House Special. My plan was to eat the tuna for a late lunch/early dinner, and the Special (salami, ham, provolone, capicola) as a snack on my ride home later that night. It should be noted here that a half is on a half a loaf of bread - about a foot long, still a big sandwich. The tab for both sandwiches came in at around $14. I took my sandwiches to a little park across the street and dug in. Here's a picture of the tuna sandwich:



Or, let's be more precise: this is HALF of a half tuna sub, after I had devoured the first half before it occurred to me to take a picture. Note 20 ounce soda bottle shown in the background for perspective. You get a lot of sandwich for $7. The bread was fresh and awesome, and actually sturdy enough to basically hold all the ingredients; the tuna was chunky and tasty and not overly mayonnaise-y; the tomatoes were fresh; the onions and oil and vinegar gave it some kick; the lettuce... was lettuce. This was a delicious sandwich, and big enough that I couldn't finish it. (Without any chips on the side or anything, either.) Stashed the other sandwich in the trunk of the car (so the inside wouldn't smell like meat for days afterward), went to the game.

Well, I think the picture of the first sandwich demonstrates the flaw in my plan: these sandwiches are way too big to eat while driving. As a result, I wound up making my way back to the Parkway and pulling off at the first rest area I found, only a couple of miles up from the Atlantic City Expressway, to pick up a bottle of water and go to town on that bad boy. Unfortunately, because I was eating in the car (sorry Mom), I wasn't able to take a picture of the Special, so I'm borrowing these, with credit to Always Hungry New York:



In addition to the great bread and the delicious meats and cheese and lettuce and tomato and onion, note the hot pepper relish on top. That stuff was a particular highlight, definitely something that sets sandwiches from the White House apart from what you might find elsewhere. Because I wasn't all that hungry after eating the tuna sub earlier, I ate half of the Special and brought the rest home for my father to enjoy (and also out of guilt since I had made a sandwich with the last of the roast beef for lunch earlier in the day).

Incredible sandwiches. Just thinking about them makes me want to go have lunch right now. If you ever find yourself in Atlantic City, you should definitely make a stop. I'm told their cheesesteaks and meatball subs are excellent as well. (NB: They also have a location set to open in the Trump Taj Mahal sometime within the next couple of weeks.)

Part 2 soon to come...

Taco In A Cone Is A Taco In A Cone

(With a nod to Ted Berg for the wording of the title.)

Well, that isn't really true; the biggest flaw with Target Field's new Walk-A-Taco (CBS Minnesota news item) is also the reason why this post's title is misleading. The Walk-A-Taco is not, in fact, a taco in a cone. Rather, it's a taco salad in a cone. Now, that isn't the worst thing in the world; the taco salad is a pretty good food item. But what it's not is a taco, which is a better food item. Here's a picture of a taco cone, as it was sold to me at the Twins' home opener on Friday, April 8, 2011:



I guess I had three main gripes with the Walk-A-Taco:

1. The Cone

Now, obviously you can't just take a regular hard taco shell, remake it into the shape of a cone, and call it a day. It'd be far too fragile (I can barely eat a hard taco without getting food all over myself as it is) to be any kind of a portable food item. The shell for the Walk-A-Taco was actually more like a fried taco bowl from a taco salad remade into a cone form. It's marginally more sturdy, yes, but the taste wasn't really right, and it felt vaguely greasy. I had actually guessed it would be in more of a flatbread-type wrapper, like a Taco Bell chalupa, and I still think that would be a better choice, but then I guess it would be more like a gyro-with-taco-filling rather than a Walk-A-Taco.

2. The Filling

As you can probably tell from the picture above, the Walk-A-Taco has a lot of lettuce in it. This wasn't just the case at the top; the proportion of meat to lettuce that you can see is about what it was throughout. The dressing was also more appropriate for a salad than for a taco, more of a southwestern vinaigrette (or maybe it was more or a ranch) than anything taco sauce/salsa-like. The meat was in larger bite-size chunks rather than in ground taco meat form, which I suppose has both good and bad points. There was some chopped tomato and shredded cheese in there as well, but overall, yeah, a lot of lettuce. The jalapenos, sour cream and cilantro featured prominently in the product shown in that CBS story? Non-existent, as far as I can recall.

3. Portability

See the fork there in the picture I included? You're going to need that. This is the case because, as I explained above, what you're really eating is a salad and not a taco, and even if the cone itself were perfectly conducive to walking and eating (and it's not), you'd still want to eat it with a fork. Because of this, my friend and I wound up walking a few sections until we found a ledge where we could put down our beers so we could eat with the provided forks. And you know how, when you're eating an ice cream cone, sometimes the bottom will crack (or just be leaky to start with) and the melty ice cream at the bottom will drop on your shirt? Yeah, that happens with a Walk-A-Taco too, except instead of ice cream it's salad dressing. (A cure for that problem: Dippin' Dots! ICE CREAM OF THE FUTURE!)

(I should add that the line at the stand selling the Walk-A-Taco was one of the longest anywhere in the stadium. However, I think that's because it was a new food item being sold on opening day and lots of people wanted to try it; I would imagine that the lines will die down eventually, so I didn't think this was worth calling a major issue.)

None of this is to say that the Walk-A-Taco is a bad food item, of course. If you're at Target Field and you want something with vegetables, this might actually be your best choice; probably not even all that bad for you if you don't eat the cone itself. But if I find myself back there, I think I'm going to stick to what they're best at: meat in tube form.