Hash S.
Yelp
It's baffling that people from Portland keep going east to learn about bagels, only to come back and make the worst examples of bagels imaginable. It's mind-boggling that every time Taylor Ham/pork roll--a product made of pork scrapings--ends up on a menu here--the starting price is about $16.
It's ridiculous that every "Italian" sub here has to have mayonnaise on sponge bread because "it's Oregon and that's just how it is here," right?
Right.
Jersey, Vin sees you. He knows you're sitting there wondering if this was all in your imagination and maybe the sandwiches, meats and cheeses you grew up with weren't like this and were just some weird regional delicacy. This cart exist to tell you that isn't the case.
Vin knows the ingredients are out there. He knows that you don't have to have rolls shipped in stale from somewhere east of the Delaware just to have decent bread on your sandwich. He knows that a full bagel apprenticeship at Ess-a-Bagel means jack shit if the bagels you make couldn't compete with the day-olds from a place in Nutley. He knows that this town's patent refusal to offer a decent bacon, egg and cheese-never mind the blessed THEC--for less than $10 regularly bites it and its chefs directly in the ass.
So it brings me great joy to see that he's out of almost everything half the time I visit him. I no longer go through the whole Proustian Madeline routine every time I bite into a sub without mayo on it and remember the sandwiches I used to bring to St. Mary's elementary school field day from Centanni's deli around the corner... or the Taylor Ham egg and cheese I'd get at Henry's deli after waiting for Yogi Berra to buy his newspaper and coffee.
I come here and--surrounded by a cart pod and bar, in a neighborhood I love--I'm in two homes at once. Vin, from this Jersey expat and the countless others who posted their love before me, thank you. If you ever get the Shop--Rite logo shirts in again, I'll take five.