A noob at the Reub(en)
Expanding horizons, minds, and taste buds, one sandwich at a time.
I consider myself a willing eater. That is to say, I’ll try anything at least once. Well, almost anything; I won’t be eating bat or pangolin anytime soon lest I become the next Pandemic Mary. You don’t live through a pandemic and not take that lesson to heart, but outside of that, I’m willing to give most foods a go.
That said, I feel like I was a late bloomer when it came to expanding my food horizons. I never had anchovies on pizza until a few months ago. I didn’t have a single bite of sushi or Thai food until college. I didn’t have Indian food until I was in my mid-twenties. I didn’t eat horse meat until I went to Japan on our honeymoon and we accidentally ordered horse meat.
When you realize mid-bite that you’re eating Seabiscuit.
Language barriers are an excellent way of accidenting into new cuisine.
That said, I’ve come to realize that there are still an extraordinary number of things that I’ve never had. Not because I’m avoiding them, but because I just haven’t yet. Case in point, this week’s sandwich.
According to our Sandwich lodestar, the quintessential Michigan sandwich is the Reuben. I did a whole two or three minutes of Googling to see if I could figure out why the Reuben — something that I definitely associated more with New York — was associated with this Midwest state. The best I can find is that Michigan-based Zingerman’s Deli is pretty famous for their reuben sandwiches.
OK, sure. Why not? We didn’t make the list nor are we from Michigan, so who are we to say otherwise? It’s merely our duty to eat these sandwiches and judge them mercilessly on arbitrary factors that we’re making up as we go along.
Me deciding if a sandwich is actually a sandwich like the sandwich authority that I am.
I was equal parts intrigued and apprehensive about the reuben sandwich. Of course I’ve seen it on countless menus, I’ve just never had one. In fact, I’ve never even had corned beef before — either in or out of a sandwich. And while I’m pretty sure I’ve tried sauerkraut and rye bread, I don’t particularly remember them. So almost everything about this sandwich was individually going to be a new(ish) experience for my tastebuds.
How exciting. Or terrifying. It was surely one of those two things.
This week we decided to order our sandwiches rather than make them from scratch. I think Nate and I both assumed that preparing corned beef would be an all but impossible task in our apartment kitchen. Could either one of us have done a quick Internet search and set ourselves straight on that? Sure! Did we? No! Why be thorough on something you literally write about every single week? What is this, the New York Times?
Just over here, waiting on our Pulitzer for excellence in sandwich-related journalism.
So order them we did from Wexler’s Deli in Santa Monica. It was a difficult ninety seconds of placing the order and putting in my credit card information, but here at Sandwich Sundays, we always go at least the extra half-inch.
When we got home, we put our sandwiches on plates — to give them that real “made at home” feel — and dug in. With that very first bite, I realized I've wasted far too much of my life not eating reubens.
A meal that’s less “homemade” and more “Made it home from the store.”
There’s not one ingredient in a reuben that I would independently choose to put on a sandwich of my own making, yet that sandwich was delicious.
I looked at Nate and said, “How come I never had one of these before?” and he just shrugged like a know-it-all and said, “I didn’t want to oversell it, but it’s one of my favorite sandwiches.”
HOW DID I NOT KNOW IT WAS ONE OF HIS FAVORITE SANDWICHES? We clearly missed some very important topics in the “getting to know each other” part of our relationship.
I’m beginning to think that a reuben is like Fight Club, “The first rule about the reuben is you don’t talk about the reuben. The second rule about the reuben is you don’t talk about the reuben.”
OR REUBENS.
Am I implying that there is a grand conspiracy out there where people underplay the reuben in a backwards attempt to ensure that everyone who tries the reuben's expectations are moderate at best so that when they actually try the reuben their mind (tastebuds) are blown?
Yes. Where is this topic on all the conspiracy theory sites?
I fully expected this week to land fairly neutrally for me. I had all but pre-written something that basically said, “Welp, I tried it. It is indeed a sandwich.” Boy was I wrong. But, that said, now that I’ve tried it — and loved it — I can’t really talk about the reuben anymore. Please see a few paragraphs above RE: the rules of F̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ ̶C̶l̶u̶b̶ the reuben.
I don’t make the rules. I just want to eat this sandwich again, so I have to follow them.
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What’d I miss? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Reuben, Sandwich Sundays or any other sandwich-related topics.