#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.