#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.