You Say Sandwich, We Say Yeah!

Man I love Reuben's in Montreal. From top to bottom we have the beef melt, the classic reubens, and the beef dip.  Surprisingly, I love the beef dip the most, as that jus is killer! Real classic steakhouse mood with all your favorite heart attack dishes, their sandwiches are hardly an afterthought to the bevy of entrees. In fact, I would say their sandwiches are the real stars. What I love most about the beef dip is how juicy the baguette already feels even before you dip it. This is a fine dip sandwich, which is hard to do. So many disappointments have been experienced before this one, which is perhaps why it's so elevated here. The reuben is A+, but in a town that does smoked meat every which way, I don't remember it as distinctly better or worse. The melt I will probably not get again, as I was just curious, but I'd rather take the dip any day. Mmm Mmm Reuben's! 

Stopping into EMPAC for a visit in upstate NY, lunch or was it breakfast was had at their lone cafe at the bottom of their space dome. A hearty beef dip this must have been, and the beautiful white catalogue of EMPAC was only there to remind me of where this was, but while sandwich eating this hot glorious mess, the book was pushed farther away from splash reach. I remember the dipping jus was quite excellent.

Before I moved from Vancouver, I ate almost every meal out, as my kitchen had been packed up and I had to say my farewells via shared meals. At one of these meetings, I downed cans of Lucky at The Whip as some degenerate form of good-bye, and grew hungry. After a few cans, I needed something to eat, and so this happened: A Beef Dip. West Coast style. That is a healthy salad and a splash of jus for the dipping. The bread was pretty good, fresh and crispy, but the beef was a bit slim and chewy. A beef dip, in my perfect world, is stacked with melt in your mouth slices of beef, a real offensive amount of jus and blood soaking through the bread. This was not it, and I ate it, and never looked back.