Byron C.
Yelp
I'm actually kinda glad that Blues City Deli is tucked away in a residential area in a part of town I might never visit again in life. Otherwise, I might eat there on a daily basis. I'd have the same physique as Precious.
I'd eaten there once before, 10 or 15 years ago. I met my father for lunch when he used to work downtown. I was in the area to go to court, but not for anything inappropriate.
BCD apparently hasn't suffered as a result of my infrequent patronage. At maybe 11:30 AM on the Friday before a holiday weekend, they had a line out the door but not down the block. It was kinda perfect. I was able to park on the street nearby, and I was able to dine-in. The latter was largely due to the fact that a) most people were taking out, and b) it was nice enough for al fresco dining. (It was one of the nicest days of the year, in fact.) Your mileage may vary.
There's a menu in a window near the door, in case you have to stand in line. It might come in handy since there's a lot of sandwiches on the menu, and it's hard to imagine how they might taste different from each other. Some of them are nearly identical, except for an ingredient or two.
I toyed with the idea of getting one of their Italian subs, which are My Thing, maybe even a Muffuletta, but it occurred to me that, while I'm sure they're good, they might not be especially different from an Italian sub you'd get anywhere else. A salami is a salami, right Diddy? Instead I went with one of their beef sandwiches, which seem to be their specialty. There's an entire section devoted to them on the menu, and they're listed as one of the most popular menu items on the app.
I went with the Original Roast Beef, which, maybe I could have gone with something more interesting? Whereas the Original Roast Beef comes with LTOP, the other variations on a beef sandwich come with onions, peppers, cheeses, giardinera and what have you. The latter, in particular, would have been nice and would have brought things into the realm of the aforementioned Italian sub.
The bog-standard roast beef sandwich is served on seeded bread, as if it were a Big Mac, which was thoughtful of them. It's toasted to the point where you could go upside someone's head with it, if this place were open into the evening. There's a diamond-like precision to the way the various toppings are sliced and everything is piled onto the bread. The people who work in the kitchen are true sandwich artists, unlike people who work at Subway.
The amount of meat (ahem) is both generous and proportionately correct to the rest of the ingredients. It tastes like an actual roast that they cooked in an oven and sliced thin, not meat scraps that have been stuffed into a casing with nitrates and ground up gym mats. It's even a bit rare at the center. The president would not approve. There wasn't any ketchup available, that I'm aware of, though the LTOP, along with mayo, gave it a bit of a hamburger vibe.
You can turn your sandwich into a combo, with chips and a soda, for roughly the price of a sandwich elsewhere. It's more convenient than it is cost effective. I did appreciate the fact that they had Coke Zero, i.e. the champagne of sodas, on tap. They also had bottled and fountain drinks from obscure and/or local brands, but what substance can possibly hope to compete with Coke Zero? It probably cures some ailments. For chips, I went with Zapp's Voodoo Heat, which I thought would be in keeping with the Cajun theme. Also, I had Red Hot Riplets the other day, elsewhere, and while the individual serving is weirdly large, they were nearly all crumbled to bits. Did I eat them all anyway, as if I'd just gotten out of jail? Of course I did.
Perhaps most importantly, this place has cookies. I went with something called the Almond Joy cookie, which they seem to be steering you towards. It didn't have a reputation that I was aware of, but it should. It might be the single best thing I've ever eaten. It's like an Almond Joy candy bar, uh, procreated with a cookie. It has a substantive chew to it like a Snickers bar, and it's hefty to the point where it almost seems like a deal at the $1.25 I paid for it. They're definitely using high quality ingredients. I joked before that I won't be in the area ever again, and I won't, but if I were to visit again, it would be in part to have one of these cookies.
