#21 Crispy Chicken Sub (Bufalo Style)

It had been far too long, and as much as the call to keep the blog going pulled at me from time to time, it was finally just a straight up craving for a good sandwich that got me back to Tat's. The meatball has been singing a siren song in my gut for a while now, but I wanted to take this one to-go, so I opted to start the first part of the crispy chicken series (Chicken Bacon Ranch to follow) with the Crispy Chicken Sub.

The menu gets to the point, "Plain or Spicy Bufalo Style with Tat's Wing Sauce (Regular or Hot), Pepper Jack, LTOM"

I couldn't pass up the Bufalo Style, and it was a pretty good call. The walk back to work couldn't end quickly enough. I grabbed some napkins, ripped open the brown paper bag, and lo and behold, I was back on the Tatswagon.

It was like I'd had this sandwich a thousand times before, some sort of time/space warp leading to an out-of-body past-life sandwich trip. This sandwich would be so much better if one were to be stoned when eating it*, but I settled for putting on my headphones after and listening to the latest Om record like a fat kid is wont to do.

This one probably would have been a bit better eating it at Tat's when it was still piping hot, and I should have remembered not to opt for the raw chopped onions, which didn't really fit with the hot sandwich. That all said, this is a pretty solid sandwich that I am looking forward to eating again when I'm not at work.**


* E.A.T. does not endorse the use of legal (or illegal) drugs*** that may or may not make your sandwich taste 1000x better.

** Herbal food supplements are 100% legal in the state of Washington, but not at work.

*** I'm talking about Marijuana, guys.

Tragedy strikes

#20 New Yorker

There's a few items on the Tat's menu that are so similar it makes you wonder why they differentiate. The Tat'strami is the classic, a sort of North Carolina barbecue take on a Reuben. And still there's a classic Reuben, with corned beef, kraut, swiss, and russian dressing on rye. Then there's the hybrid of the two, the New Yorker. "A hearty combination of our in-House Corned Beef and Pastrami w/ Swiss & spicy mustard on Rye bread.... Add Slaw - No Charge."

So here's the thing. There's no reason to order this sandwich. I'm not saying it's not good, because holy shit look at this thing:

That picture doesn't really do it justice. It's a pile of beef worthy of an east-coast sandwich shop. The corned beef really has a stronger brine flavor than the house pastrami, and the meat to slaw ratio here is really tilted in favor of the meat. Unlike the Tat'strami which is more like 70% meat to 30% slaw this is more like 90% meat to 10% slaw. The slaw provides just a hint of acidity and sweetness that helps the sandwich from being too overwhelmingly greasy and salty. And toasting the bread is a nice touch as it holds together under the weight of all that hot beef much better. No soggy bread today.

There's no reason to order this because really, it's not as good as the Tat'strami. The rye bread is fine but it's more caraway bread than rye, really, and while rye is awesome, caraway tastes like my Grandma Rubin's sock drawer. This sandwich is awesome, but on a menu like Tat's has, it's overshadowed and definitely something I wouldn't go back to.

#19 Hot Turkey

I watched the Tat's linecam until things slowed down and then walked over. I can tell already that as soon as the weather warms up it'll be a bit less prohibitive to get there multiple times in a week. The sun was out and the walk through Occidental Mall was beautiful. One of my favorite places in the city.

Tat's was a bit more crowded than I expected from the linecam, but I ordered and squeezed into a bar seat next to a guy with some sweet hand/face/head tattoos whose phone rang 5 times over 15 minutes. Important dude.

Hit my 10 punches and got a free sandwich. Couldn't imagine the day getting much better. Got the Hot Turkey, which the menu describes as "In-House Smoked Turkey dipped in turkey jus w/ Swiss LTOM." I got it club style with bacon, for $1 it's worth it and the nice lady comp'ed it rather than charging me the $1. Not sure what happened to the young lady who used to work every lunch day, she was awesome and talked to me about Napalm Death briefly once. The young lady who has been there the last few times is totally on top of shit, too, not sure how they luck out with such good front of house people.

My sandwich came up and smelled fucking delicious. The roll was toasted just right and had a great flaky on the outside soft on the inside thing going on. There was a lot of lettuce, tomatoes, and onions, and they were fresh. I bit in and almost started cussing out loud. This sandwich was fucking delicious.

I mauled the first half like it had said bad things about my mother. Absolutely demolished it. I ate it so fast I had to stop and make myself take a picture before the second half met the same fate. I thought about getting up and ordering another so I could just keep going to town on hot turkey club after hot turkey club.

Yep, I'm white - like you couldn't have guessed by my terrible first world complaining about really good sandwiches not being perfect. This shot shows the second half kind of crushed under my overanxious grasp. It's a really nice serving of turkey that, when warm and dipped in the jus, just came to life. The seasoning actually fit in really well on this one and the mayo gave it a bit of that post-thanksgiving fresh turkey sandwich vibe. But this is better than that. For fucking serious.

This sandwich is the reason I started this blog, this experiment, in the first place. This is one of the hidden gems that I would NEVER have ordered in a thousand fucking years. Remind me about this sandwich when I'm slogging through the Roast Veggie and the House Salad.

#18 Honey Ham & Cheese

Went back to a cold one because I couldn't remember which sandwiches I'd had and which I'd only had crusty wet dreams about. This is the last thing on the bottom left side of the menu before I get to the shit I don't want to eat, so I knew I hadn't tried it.

The menu says "The standard sub classic with Swiss... try it with hots & sweets" so I did, and added some mustard, oil, and vinegar on top because I'm watching my weight. My buddy, as you can see, knows what he's doing and went straight up Tatstrami, the sandwich of champions.

I don't know what's up with the strange ass way that they put subs together at Tat's. The meat on the outside thing is weird as shit and makes it really hard to get bites with a consistent ratio of meat to bread to fillings. Must be some east coast shit? Don't get it, don't like it, don't want none of it. I mean, I do, but for god's sake put the meat IN the bread already.

Alright, that's what I'm talking about. I can't even imagine this sandwich without the hot and sweet peppers, the oil and vinegar, and the yellow mustard. With all that stuff it's a fucking sandwichgasm in your mouth, all mustard leaking down your cheek and shit. I'd put this up there with the Hoagie Steak on my "want to repeat right away list" and it's all about the condiments pushing it over the top. Ballin'.

#17 Special: ITALIAN ROAST PORK smoked provolone, spicy spinach rabe w/ garlic aoili

The special hooked me. I'm not much for spinach, but roast pork, smoked anything, and garlic and spicy and sandwich. My brain didn't even recognize the "spinach" part lost in the midst of all the other descriptors.

I think they forgot the garlic aioli, but I was immediately so deep in this thing that I didn't even bother to worry about it. The provolone was melted in a generous heap on the top and I adjusted it a bit so I wasn't eating straight up mouthfuls of cheese. The pork was sliced really thin and there was a LOT of it. This sandwich had the portions absolutely dialed in. Could have used some salt, and some of that aioli, but that didn't stop it from being heart attack inducingly tasty. The one real gripe I had was that there was enough water coming from either the pork or the spinach that the second half of the sandwich got soggy within about a minute to the point of turning to mush and falling apart.

I wiped off the slushy dead bread like dirt off a fallen french fry and soldiered on like any really fat man with an unquenchable hunger for sandwiches would. I don't believe in the bible because nowhere in the supposed "ten commandments" do they lay down the six second rule.

Yeah, that's right. Tat's makes spinach taste good. Who the fuck would have thought?

#16 Chicken Parmesan

Trying really hard to get back on the horse. I figured I'd dig in to something I thought had a really good chance of being awesome enough to keep me excited about eating in spite of my ever deteriorating physical condition.

As that fucking retarded ewok Emeril would say "Boom!" or "Bam!" or something.

Chicken Parm, motherfucker. It's like an Italian American shrine to obesity, and as a man with a gut so big he can barely see his dick I felt like this was what I needed to do with myself instead of exercising. The Tat's menu says "Lightly fried, topped with Tat's marinara sauce & broiled with Mozzarella and Parmesan cheese." It's got chicken and tomatoes in it, how unhealthy can it be?

Here's where I've got to really apologize. There's no excuse for this kind of terrible photo in a classy piece of journalism like this. And there's only one sandwich shot. Truth is that I was embarrassed to be taking a picture of my food like some yuppie yelp-review writing fuckwit who'd rather tweet about a sandwich than eat it. Not my style. In the future I'll sacrifice my pride for the task at hand and get better pictures. Of course this looks more like a pizza in a bread bowl than anything else, and if Tat's steals that idea for a lunch special i want a free one.

This is kind of the Cap'n Crunch of lunch sandwiches. It was hot as fuck and after the cheese scalded my tongue the rock hard chunks of fried chicken scraped the roof of my mouth til it bled. Then I proceeded to devour the entire sandwich in a frenzied orgy of blood, meat, cheese, and sauce. If this was some secret attempt at aversion therapy to get me to stop eating like a disgusting pig, it failed.