#13 Hot Beef

Lucky number 13, a quarter of the way through the Tat's menu.  It's troubling, but my last few sandwiches at Tat's have been particularly unsatisfying. I was desperate for a return to normalcy, and my buddy Ethan wanted to grab lunch, so I headed in the direction of one of the sandwiches I had hoped would be a secret superstar: Hot Beef.

As a kid my grandfather would take me to an old-school cafeteria in San Francisco. It was down a long flight of stairs into a daylight basement with 20 foot tall ceilings, and full of old men having long retirement lifestyle lunches. My grandfather and I both religiously ate the hot beef sandwich - piles of prime rib carved thin by hand to order and piled onto an Italian roll and served with a side of jus.

Tat's menu says "Our own Roast Beef in au Jus w/ Provolone, horseradish, and hot peppers. Injected with fries..mmmmm..no charge"  The dude at the counter mentioned cutting the horseradish with mayo, so I said "yes" and of course injected it with fries.

This isn't my grandpa's hot beef, and much to my chagrin there's nothing in Seattle that remotely resembles that amazing cafeteria.  In spite of the high bar set by my nostalgia, the Tat's Hot Beef is a hell of a sandwich.  You can tell from the moment you see the pile of fries soaked in freshly melted provolone that it's going to make your day, and the rest doesn't disappoint.  This time the beef was plentiful, and the fries add a really great contrasting texture.  The jus is good and the roll was crisp and nicely toasted in parts from the broiler.

If you want to try something new off the Tat's menu this is the direction I'd point in. Next time I'll get it without the mayo and with extra horseradish, and there is definitely going to be a "next time" with this sandwich. We're going to become very, very good friends.

#12 In-house Roast Beef

Cold roast beef is one of my favorite sandwiches. It was my childhood go-to and back in the '80s there was a deli in a stripmall in Vallejo that roasted their own beef and had some amazing sourdough which instilled in me a love of sandwiches that has served me well until this day.

Tat's ain't that place, sadly. On the list of hits and misses this kind of falls in the middle, but it definitely isn't worth ordering again.  I hate to see my love letter to Tat's turn into a "what to avoid list" but the last thing I'm going to do is blow hot up air up the internet's ass over some mediocre sandwich.

There's not much more to this than the Turkey.  I didn't learn my lesson and forgot to leave out the "seasonings" and the chopped onion. Those don't make or break this though, and at the heart the problem is that their house roast beef isn't great. The insult to injury is that they are very, very skimpy with it. You can see that there's barely the better part of two slices of beef on the sandwich.



Now I'm going to have to go find a good roast beef sandwich to wash away the disappointment.

#11 Sausage

That was ten days ago.

So was that.

I took me ten days to finally write this simply because I had high hopes for this sandwich and it was a fucking mess. Not that it was all that bad, but it was a serious disappointment. The sausage was a bit dry and hard, it was cut into chunks that were far from bite sized, and the whole thing was almost immediately a soggy mess.  I ended up pulling out my pocket knife to cut up the sausage and had to wrap the second half to keep it from falling apart.  This whole thing is about how awesome Tat's is, but in this case Tat's was far from awesome and that's not a lot of fun to write about.

#10 Tat's Jambalaya (w/ Brisket sandwich)

When in a drunken haze I originally conceived this whole mess, I looked through the Tat's menu and just started counting shit.  I included salads and sides and the major variations of the prime items (Chicken, Tuna, and Egg Salad sandwiches all separately, for example).  It ended up at 52 and that seemed ideal for my plan. The downside was that this meant that meal #51 was probably going to be me eating some Tastykakes.  Not exactly compelling.

My plan for each of the menu items that aren't a sandwich, or at least aren't large enough to constitute a meal in and of themselves, is to eat them along with a sandwich that isn't part of the 52.  This is going to allow me to squeeze in some of the unlisted specials, and to come up with a few weird-as-shit hybrid sandwiches.  "If you don't see it...ask!" is the motto on the Tat's sign, and at some point I'm going to take them up on that.

The only person I know who is as willing to dedicate his time and effort to pointless (ie: fucking rad) acts of consumptive self destruction as myself is Chris, the man behind Idiot's Delight.  He pointed out the special at Tat's today and I sure as shit wasn't going to abstain.

To cross one of the 52 off the list along with my brisket, I ordered a cup of the Tat's jambalaya.

 

I've been wondering for quite a while what the hell was going on with Tat's having jambalaya on the menu.  Maybe this is an east coast thing I'm ignorant of. The thing is, I fucking love jambalaya. I make a pretty fucking mean brown jambalaya with roast chicken and andouille. No disrespect to the creole style of red jambalaya, but the Cajuns have this thing locked the fuck up.

I opened up the plastic container of Tat's jambalaya and thought maybe they'd accidentally given me a side of marinara.  Digging in, it got weirder.  Below a thick layer of tomatoes was a layer of rice.  As I started mixing it up things got even weirder.  There were sausage chunks, which I'd figured on, but there were also a whole bunch of corn kernels.  This has to be somebody's mom's recipe, there's no other explanation for the weirdness going on here.

This was a bowl of tomatoes stewed with garlic, chunks of what I believe was andouille, although unsmoked and rubbery.  There was a pretty good spice kick to it, and it was as warm and hearty as you could ask for.  Once I put my confusion as to why exactly I was eating stewed tomatoes and rice instead of jambalaya aside I was pretty happy about the whole thing.  It's damned tasty.  Italian jambalaya?  I don't know what the hell to call it, but I have a feeling I might end up craving it in the middle of the night when I can't sleep.

But on to the main course...

The disclaimer I should give about bbq is this: I make a lot of my own bbq, and I have friends who are bbq nuts as well.  I rarely eat bbq at restaurants around Seattle anymore because most of it is shit and the stuff I make at home is easily superior to anything I've found, and I've spent time at a lot of local bbq spots.

Brisket is a funny thing, because it's one of my favorite types of bbq, it's not that hard to make, and yet it's the hardest to find in a remotely edible form in Seattle.  The best brisket I've ever eaten was smoked by Chris of the Mop Sauce and Two Smoking Barrels BBQ team. One day I hope to make it down to Austin and hit up Franklin Barbecue, but until then I have no expectation of eating anything on par with Chris' brisket.  The point of all of that being, when someone says they have brisket, my first reaction is excitement, followed by despair as I realize it's not going to be any good.  My buddy Wes and I refer to being fucked over by a bad food choice as being "brisketted" due to a time when I ordered brisket and waded through a pile of what most closely resembled rehydrated beef jerky while he consumed some of the fattiest spare ribs I've ever seen.

Tat's brisket sandwich, all of that said, is pretty damned good.  It has no bark, and while there's plenty of smoke flavor there's no real smoke ring to be seen around the meat, so I wonder what goes on in their in-house smoker.  But these guys aren't a bbq house and they don't claim to be.  Given that, their brisket is better than what you will find at most places in town who DO make that claim.  Tat's brisket is sliced paper-think and is tender enough that a bit of pressure causes it to fall apart and almost resemble chopped brisket (as in the picture above).  Open the sandwich up, though, and you can see that it's very carefully sliced, beautiful brisket.  The slaw is good, as always, better than any BBQ place in Seattle other than the now-relocated Rhodie's which used to sit at Denny and Broad.  The sauce is brown sugar sweet and honestly pretty reminiscent of KC Masterpiece. It could use a lot of apple cider vinegar and/or being replaced by a totally different sauce.  But in the context of the sandwich it works fine and I'm sure it's a crowd pleaser.

Nit picking aside, as you'd expect, it's fucking good.  I'd eat it again in a heartbeat, if I get many of those left after this whole project is said and done.

#9 Hoagie Steak

As much of an institution as the cheesesteak is, there's two variants of almost equal importance.

1. The pizza steak
2. The hoagie steak

There's a group of people, a subculture, that would argue that there is a third: the chicken cheesesteak.  These people are fucking turds who deserve to have their mouths washed out with diarrhea.  In fact, even the inclusion of a "chicken cheesesteak" on the Tat's menu is an absolute disgrace.  A person of higher moral character than myself might choose to abstain from even eating here based on that item, and they would be a better person than me.  "Chicken cheesesteak" - heavy on the air quotes.

That is Tat's failing.  My failing is that I've never had a hoagie steak, or a hoagie cheesesteak.  Never.  Had a hundred cheesesteaks.  Had a dozen or two pizza steaks.  Had more hoagies than anyone should eat and still be able to fit through a regular sized doorway.  Never had their bastard offspring.

My buddy Ethan met up with me and we broke my hoagie steak cherry, as anticlimactic of an event as that is.

"Hoagie Steak. Topped with lettuce, tomato, onion."

The Tat's menu is wild about capitalization and sometimes straight up terse.  I did mine up this time, provolone, onions, and fried peppers.  The french rolls today were super soft, there was no crust on it and that was a little disappointing, but it saved the roof of my mouth some pain so I shouldn't complain too much.  Other than that there's not a single bad thing I can say about this sandwich. I devoured it before I even realized I had started eating it.  I could go in for two more right now. 

Unlike my last encounter, the beef was fantastic this time.  The provolone is always a good choice, and the onions and peppers really shouldn't be optional.  The lettuce and tomato take this sandwich in a totally wholesome direction, which for a cheesesteak is pretty weird.  It's like the sandwich equivalent of an attractive lady dressed up as a slutty librarian.  The contrast between the virgin (lettuce, tomato, onions) and the whore (fucking cheesesteak, dude) is more than the sum of its parts.

Go eat one.  Remember to not stand up until your sandwich boner subsides.

#8 Sausage, Egg, & Cheese

Holy shit you guys.

I was having a crap morning and getting antsy sitting at work, so I hauled my ass out of my chair and trekked through the rain to Tat's this morning. Next in line on the breakfast menu was Pepper, Egg, & Cheese... but I was unhappy and a vegetarian sandwich wasn't going to come close to cutting it.  I skipped straight to the Sausage, Egg, & Cheese with Provolone.

When I'm old and dying I hope I look back on this as one of the better decisions I've made in my life.  Like not believing in god and buying a giant flat screen plasma tv.

Without getting into too much masturbatory food hyperbole let me just say this: go eat this fucking sandwich. Wait until it's pissing rain and you're having a bad day and then go get 8" of absolutely fucking delicious breakfast sausage patties chopped up topped with fried eggs and melted provolone.  For $5.  Five fucking dollars.

#7 Tat's Grinder

This one I've had before, and I'm sure as fuck happy to have had it again.  Tat's on a Friday.  I love this place.  Some of the stuff I've been eating lately is out of the realm of what I'd choose if left to my own devices.  The Grinder however, deserves its place directly below the Tat'strami at the top of the Hot Subs list.

"Capicolla, Pepperham, & Genoa Salami, w/ Provolone, hot & sweet peppers, pickles, LTOM"

In classic Tat's fashion it's a lot of unnecessary capitalization, but they're just really excited about the sandwiches.  This sandwich is basically pork three ways: capicolla is cured shoulder, pepperham is cured pork leg, and genoa salami may have anything in it (including beef) but is generally made from pork trimmings and/or shoulder.  Between the three meats, grilled and served hot on an italian roll with all the peppers, cheese, and the copious lettuce, tomato, onions, and mayo, this verges on being a kitchen sink sandwich.  There's a whole lot going on, and there's something wrong with you if you can eat it slowly enough to decipher the details.

The veggies are hiding a monstrous pile of sloppy, warm, cheesy meat.  I'm going to need to exercise and diet for a day or two after to make up for this, but there's not a doubt in my mind it will have been worth it.

#6 Cajun Turkey

What the fuck can you say about 52 sandwiches that is worth saying?  That isn't the point of this, but it is nagging at me anyways.

I'm really feeling the Hoagies portion of the menu.  Continued on with the next one on the list.  I've been thinking that I just can not fucking wait for the roast beef coming up next, but I really want to save that for a sunny day.  It's getting cold and wet fast and I can already tell that hot sandwiches are going to be calling to me.

When it's raining in Seattle you can tell the tourists by their umbrellas. Natives wear hoods and hats and mainly they just suck it up.  Walked through the rain to Tat's and nearly got an eye poked out by an idiot girl with a giant UW umbrella texting while she walked down her left side of sidewalk around a corner.  Admissions standards for the University of Washington are clearly fucked.

The cajun turkey description reads "Our In-House Smoked Turkey all spiced up and served with Pepper Jack, roasted reds & hot pepper spread."  Wouldn't have known there was hot pepper spread if I hadn't read it, the mayo was out in force today.  The Italian roll was on its game as usual.  Turkey was the same as last time, a little dry to be honest and this time the smoke character wasn't very appealing.  The "cajun" part of this sandwich is nothing other than a cajun dry spice mixture sprinkled on the sliced turkey. That is weird, and the first bite was as disconcerting as I expected.  Wasn't feeling it.  Second bite and I thought I was going to throw it away.  Got some of the peppers on the third bite and then it made sense.  Get a straight whiff of the spice and it's not good - paprika, cayenne, probably garlic powder, etc. Given how much "Philly Cheesesteaks" have been bastardized outside of Philadelphia and you'd think Philadelphians would be a bit more conscientious about the blatant misrepresentation of another American regional food culture, but apparently not.

 That's a lot of sandwich.

After a bit I got into it and the whole thing kind of made sense.  Kind of.  You'd be hard pressed to put these peppers on this bun and put meat and cheese on it and have it not be damned good, but this one doesn't reach its potential.  I knew with a menu this huge there had to be some filler, and for me this is definitely it.

Didn't stop me from housing the whole thing in a few minutes, though.

#5 In-House Smoked Turkey

Tat's gets busy at lunch.  It's understandable, it's hands-down the best place in Pioneer Square to get enough food in your belly to get through the rest of a work day.  The difference between Tat's and Salumi is that at Tat's the line moves.  The regular to tourist ratio is HIGH and the folks who work at Tat's know what's up.  You want a sandwich.  They make it happen.

It was almost 1pm and I hadn't eaten, so I checked the Tat's Line Cam on a whim.  There was no line in sight.  I walked over and decided to move down the list of Hoagies.  I was still thinking about the Italian I had a few weeks ago.

Next up, the "In-House Smoked Turkey."  I wasn't excited. I thought about skipping it.  If I'm being honest with myself I'll say that if I wasn't doing EVERYTHING at Tat's I would never in my life order this sandwich.  Turkey is fine, sure, but a Turkey sandwich at a restaurant inevitably means turkey breast, which is a close second to chicken breast on list of meats I don't ever want to eat.  Bred to the point where all fat (ie: flavor) has been removed from an already lean cut of meat, turkey/chicken breasts don't have much going for them.

The menu description says "In-House Smoked Turkey Breast w/ Swiss.. The Best! Make it a club and add thick-cut bacon."  I tooked their suggestion and got everything and the bacon.

It's a hefty sandwich.  The smoke on the turkey is there for sure, but in the context of the sandwich it's very subtle.  The Swiss is almost imperceptible, but it holds everything together.  The bacon is a good call, it fits well into the sandwich.  The balance of ingredients/meat/bread in this is perfect.  I am way more excited about this sandwich than I'd ever have imagined I could be.  Like the Italian it's clean and filling, perfect for when you aren't in the mood for a gut-bomb.

There's a few details about it that could be improved - diced yellow onions are a weird touch here, where thin sliced red onions would have been amazing.  The yellows were just bitter and came in a large dice.  That's about it, though.  Tat's nails it yet again.

#4 Hot Pastrami

And... I'm back.  I was out of state for over a week and hence unable to eat any Tat's.  My buddy Lauren and I rectified that problem today.  She suggested I go for the Hot Pastrami sandwich and I was more than happy about that choice.

I spent the last week in a small town in the midwest.  It was pretty intense culture shock.  I lived out in the middle of nowhere during high school, and I've been on tour and seen a lot of this country.  But staying in a place you're not from for that long can give you a lot of perspective.  I won't shop at Wal*Mart, I have no desire to eat at Arby's. I vote with my paycheck, by supporting local businesses and giving my money to my neighbors and to people who work hard and make our community a more enjoyable place to live.  This was a tremendously difficult ideology to uphold where I was. You'd never find a place like Tat's out there, and that's sad.

But I'm back now and a minute after I placed my order I had this in front of my face.

It's so good to be home.

The Hot Pastrami is "In-House smoked Pastrami & Swiss w/ spicy mustard on Rye bread" and it comes optionally with slaw.  I asked the nice lady at the counter if she thought I should get slaw and she offered it on the side, so I took it.  Glad I did.  Slaw on a sandwich is always good and next time I'll do it that way.  I was a bit worried it would make this sandwich into more of a Tat'strami clone, and without it the mustard and the awesome rye bread did really shine.  Tat's pastrami is always great, it's got a nice brine flavor and very mild smoke.  Wonderfully fatty and juicy, it's possibly the pinnacle of beef.  Cured in brine, covered in crushed black pepper and coriander and smoked, sliced thin and warmed on a grill until bits and pieces get crispy... damn.  Do you think if Mitt Romney ate one of these he'd stop being an ingorant piece of shit?  Probably not

#3 Tat's Italian

I wanted to get another sandwich in this week, badly.  The words of my mentor, Irwin M. Fletcher were ringing through my head.

"I'll have a steak sandwich, and a... steak sandwich."

Braced to resist the urge for more steak I headed in to Tat's in the late afternoon. It was nice out and I decided to break into the 'Hoagies' section of the menu, previously uncharted.

The menu says "An East-Coast Classic ... Capricolla, Pepperham, Genoa Salami, Provolone with hot & sweet peppers!"  All subs come with lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, seasonings, and mayo. I went with an 8" Italian with oil, vinegar, and yellow mustard. Up until the cheesesteak I had planned to order everything without modification, but that clearly didn't work for me last time so I decided to chalk it up as a mistake and move on.

An Italian is an Italian for the most part. This isn't supposed to be some revelatory adventure in gastronomic delight. It was fucking delicious. I devoured it. I felt 100x better about my life afterwards and I managed to not hate my job for about 30 minutes once I got back just by thinking about how great sandwiches are. What the hell else can you ask for?

The roll was nice, the cold cuts were as expected, and the toppings were fresh. With the oil and vinegar it was pretty zesty. Not dry, and not soaking wet. Next time I make my way back to the Tat's Italian I'll ask them to skip the "seasoning" and add some extra lettuce.  If I wasn't so lazy I'd walk back right now and order another one.

#2 Steak and Whiz

I kind of got fucked at Tat's today.  And I know I shouldn't use 'fuck' as a pejorative because it promotes a culture of sexual violence... but I kind of got fucked.  I thought briefly about whether I should real-deal this post or not.  This is supposed to be an homage to Tat's as much as it is a document of my misadventures with sandwiches. In the end it's just a fucking sandwich, though, and if I have to gloss over the nasty bits then what's the point?

I knew that my first lunch menu sandwich had to be the cheesesteak.  It was my original go-to, and it's the flagship item on the menu. I like mine with provolone, but whiz is the blue collar holy grail, and I couldn't imagine skipping it in favor of anything else.  Steak and cheeze whiz on a bun.  Shit.

I went to Philly Boys in SODO with my boy Colin about a week ago to prep for this. The only way I know to prep for a cheesesteak is with a cheesesteak.  I did the Philly Boys steak with whiz, too, thinking I'd go apples-to-apples.  It was delicious, as usual, although the meat/whiz ratio was off in favor of the whiz, and if you're going to fall on one side of that spectrum, cheese-heavy is the wrong one.

So I got to Tat's at 11:30am on the dot, right before the line usually balloons.  It's been well over a year since I got a steak sandwich from this place and I'd forgotten that they don't do onions standard: it's steak and cheese on a roll, and you can add onions, mushrooms, sweet peppers, hot peppers, or fried peppers.  I've had cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, I've had them all over the place.  I'm not claiming to be an expert, but I've been around the block with this type of sandwich.  Peppers are one thing, but I'm not sure what kind of idiot orders one without onions...

...but if that's the standard here, then that's what I'm getting.  So: this kind of idiot.

They called order 178 and I walked up closer to the counter, expecting to be out of there and walking back to my office a few blocks away shortly.  Nope.  182, 186, 184... up to 190, and still no sign of my sandwich.  It was another 10+ minutes of other people walking away with their food while I waited.  Shit happens, food service is tough, those guys are slammed.  I tried to write it off.

Then line cook working the grill looked over the counter and gave me a sad, beaten dog kind of look as he handed my sandwich to the nice lady who finished and wrapped it.  I walked out of there with a hot sandwich in my hand, firmly believing that the glitch in my day was over and that in 5 minutes I'd be engulfed in sandwich bliss and have forgotten it ever happened.

Maybe it's just me, but I think a cheesesteak is best if you give it a few minutes.  Let the cheese melt into the meat like a sauce into pasta.  Give the roll a minute to steam in the wrapper.  So if I don't have far to go sometimes I prefer to take a steak to go rather than eating it there.

I got back to my office and unraveled the paper.  To find this.

That doesn't look right.  And it's not like I haven't had this sandwich, from this place, many, many times before.

I'm not from Philly, I don't really have a place to talk about what's authentic or not.  What I'm looking for in a cheesesteak is this: very thin sliced beef cooked on a hot grill, and cut and turned while it's cooking so that the meat gets a bit of sear without steaming.  A well cooked Philly-style steak is the closest thing Americans have to wok hay.  Onions are a whole different thing, they should be soft and sweet, but not caramelized or limp.  The roll needs to be soft, but solid enough to hold up to the sandwich, and there are particular proportions of cheese to meat to bun.

This beef was grey, like it had been boiled.  No sear.  And the texture was way off, with lots of big chunks.  The roll had completely fallen apart, and I could even hold the sandwich halves up to eat them properly.  I went through about 6 napkins trying to get half the sandwich down and then gave up.  It wasn't worth the effort.  It was hands-down one of the worst cheesesteaks I'd ever paid money for, and from a shop which is undeniably one of the better sandwich shops in town.

So today Tat's fucked me.  I'll be back again, though, probably sooner rather than later.

#1 Egg and Provolone

You have to be some kind of pompous asshole to want to write a blog.  Of all the challenges I've put myself to and the insane bets I've made, this is the first that's inspired me to share my exploits.  It must be a decline in my moral character that has led me to this point.

So I walked down to Tat's this morning to drown my middle-class existential sorrow in the quintessential American way - by numbing my emotions with an enormous breakfast sandwich.

I wanted something with some heft to it, and almost skipped to some of the meatier breakfast options.  Part of the point of E.A.T. is to get myself away from my habitual tendencies, though, so I went chronological and started with the first item on the breakfast menu - Egg and Cheese.  As many times as I've been to Tat's I've never made it down in the morning.  When I saw the prices I expected these things on an english muffin, but Tat's doesn't fuck around and my provolone and egg came on an 8" french roll.

I needed to get to work, so I took it to go and ate it while downing some nasty office coffee and staring blankly at my monitor.  This was better than some egg and cheese on bread deserved to be.  Simple, classic.  I should eat breakfast more often, I feel invigorated enough to quit my job and follow my proverbial fucking bliss.

The Beginning

If you live in or near Seattle and enjoy good sandwiches then there's a good chance you've eaten at Tat's Delicatessen in Pioneer Square.  In my first dozen plus visits I never strayed from the first item I ordered, the cheesesteak with provolone.  After their move to the new space, I have been two dozen plus times and have ordered the Tat'strami all but twice.  To break this trend, and in keeping with my history of taking jokes too far, I am embarking on a challenge to eat every item on the Tat's Delicatessen menu over the next 12 months.

By my count there are a fortuitous 52 items between the Tat's lunch and breakfast menus.  4 steak sandwiches, 11 hoagies, 15 hot subs, 2 soups, 6 salads, 5 sides, 8 breakfast sandwiches, and 1 breakfast side.

Here we go.