Ash Austen: the Hippie Beast

Lets just put it this way: sometimes i like to go my own way (inspired by fleetwood mac). going your own way involves a level of risk and disappointment. for instance, when looking for places to eat sandwiches sometimes i go my own way, or in other words go out on a whim and find a place on my own with little or no advice or direction from anybody. sometimes it pays off. you find a gem that no one has ever heard of before. however, sadly, sometimes you get the steak truck.

The Steak Truck: Cheese Steak, visited 5/11/010
F.A.L.C.O.N. Rating
2/10 falcons (wouldnt it be cool if i had some kind of graphic here?)

the steak truck is nothing more than a truck that sells steak, and before i talk about their sandwich i want to applaud them for being honest and not embellishing what kind of a business they are running.
Ok, if you are looking for a good ash sandwich in new york then the steak truck is what you are looking for. when i took a bite into my philly cheese steak i was like, "this is some awesome ash! i love ash sandwiches!" the sandwich turned my tongue into a pompeii victim which, by the way, has always been a lunch goal of mine. and if you have similar goals then come on down to the steak truck and cross "eat a charcoal sandwich" off your list. for people who dont have goals that involve eating pumice, if you do go to the steak truck dont ask for the hot sauce. im surprised i didn't get a pulmonary infection from this sandwich.

Food Merchants: Turkey Sandwich, visited 5/14 /010
F.A.L.C.O.N. rating
3/10 falcons

I walk by this place every morning on my way to work. there is a sign outside that has a delicious pasta shown on it and it says "build your own pasta". the pasta in the picture looks like it has some garlic olive oil sauce, sun dried tomatoes, and in my minds eye i also remember there being something green in it like broccoli or peas. anyway, it looks delicious. so, one day i said to myself, "that pasta looks good. im gonna get a sandwich there." this brings me to a corollary i like to call "the chicken heart corollary". it goes something like this: just because the garlic sirloin at a place tastes like the cure for cancer that doesn't mean that the chicken heart is gonna taste like anything other than a gross chicken heart. in this case: just because the pasta bar looks good that doesn't mean that the sandwiches are going to be any good.

the turkey sandwich was not bad... it just wasn't good. it was like eating a water sandwich, or air sandwich, or something boring like that... it was like eating a pride and prejudice sandwich. it had its turkey, it had its tomato, it had its lettuce, it had its onion, it had its cheddar cheese (by the way, someone should tell new york that american cheese is not cheddar cheese), what it lacked was a john hancock... some kind of signature flavor that sets it apart from just a turkey sandwich. in the mathematics of sandwiches something special should happen. bread+ turkey+ condiments= something greater than bread+ turkey+ condiments. if you didn't understand that equation it means you have either never taken a math class before or you have never eaten a sandwich. at food merchants all you had was: ingredients+ bread= organized ingredients in bread. the sandwich did not taste as good as the pasta looked, but atleast it didn't taste like a lava rock.


Some Street Cart: Falafel "Sandwich", visited 5/17/010
F.A.L.C.O.N. Rating
5/10 falcons

first off, calling this a sandwich is debatable. personally i would call it some kind of pita or taco, but the vendor called it a sandwich so i decided to put it in the blog anyway. second off, i had never tried falafel before, nor did i even know what falafel was (talk about going your own way). so, for those of you who dont know what it is i did a lot of research on the subject and found this cool website called wikipedia. this is what wikipedia said about falafel, "Falafel ; Arabic: فلافل‎, Egyptian, and Sudanese Arabic: طعمية ta'miyya) is a fried ball or patty made from ground chickpeas and/or fava beans." and im totally cool with whatever chickpeas or fava beans are because they tasted pretty good. maybe its because they were fried?

im not kidding, the falafel was good. the vendor whipped me up this sandwich that had the falafels, cucumber, lettuce, tomatoes, and onions and some kind of yogurt sauce. the only real problem with this sandwich was the produce, it didnt seem very fresh.

after eating the falafel sandwich i immediately felt a close tie with the nature around me. i wanted to go to burning man or something. i wanted to protect a tree in danger like a mother bear protects her cubs. i immediately grew a beard and smelled like a woolly mammoth with body odor. it was happening... i was becoming some kind of radical vegan hippie . this is one of the side effects of eating and enjoying falafel. but, luckily, i realised just in time that i was eating from a street vendor and chances were he had fried the falafel in some kind of animal oil. upon realising this my mammoth stink was gone, my beard burned right off my face, and i reasoned that burning man is a dumb celebration after all. some tree in trouble will die alone tonight.

Stage Deli: The Eye of the Meat Storm

Stage Deli: Pastrami Sandwich, visited 5/5/010
F.A.L.C.O.N. Rating
7/10 falcons


stage deli is everything i feel we have rejected in the west. it is a high class deli (delicatessen is what they call them here) where people go and spend more money on a sandwich than canada does on homeland security. the waiters (thats right, its a sit down sandwich place, weird) are dressed in the same uniforms that their serving forefathers did fifty years ago and they treat their patrons like idiots. kind of a working class snobbery that dickens eloquently called the "bully of humility". In fact, if this blog rated sandwiches based on service i think i would have to give this place 0/10 falcons.

However, i try to make this blog about the sandwiches. the experience is ancillary to the taste. i mean, c'mon, they're sandwiches, i'll probably eventually blog about a sandwich that i get from coney island from some circus freak who toasts his sandwiches quizno's style by shooting laser beams out of his eyes and stabbing a sword through it. the sandwich comes first, i have always regarded my sandwich integrity as one of my finer qualities.

so, i was referred to this sandwich place by a website that rated the best pastrami sandwiches in new york. it was #4 on the list of 10 sandwiches. pastrami has always been one of my favorite sandwich meats (the #9 at togos still holds a magical place in my upbringing) so i decided to order the sandwich that put this place on the map. I ordered the pastrami.

WARNING: if you are reading this blog and (saddly) taking my advice on sandwich places you should actually eat at in new york then i think you should hear this before i move on. as i said before, this is all about the taste of the sandwich and no other factor goes into my F.A.L.C.O.N. rating system. not even $$$ price. so let me tell you, this sandwich is expensive. looking back at it i feel like an absolute sucker for paying as much as i did for this sandwich. i am even too embarrassed to tell you how much it was. lets put it this way, you can see the menu on the internet... guess what you dont see on that menu. so, just so you know, this sandwich is literally worth its weight in gold. END WARNING.

So, i got the pastrami. notice how i did not tag the word "sandwich" onto the word "pastrami" in the last sentence, yeah, that was by design. the "sandwich" was more like the meat library of alexandria held together by two rye bookends. In fact, as i held the half sandwich in my had it reminded me of the red storm that has been brewing on jupiter for the past million years. it intimidated me a little.

there i was, looking into the pastrami abyss. it looked back. sized me up. it either winked or began to cry, i couldn't tell. then it began to sing to me in a seductive, african american voice. it went something like this, "I ain't gonna worry, I ain't gonna push, won't push you [andy], So c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, [andy], stop beatin' 'round the bush." i took that as a dare.

the sandwich was too big for mouth. some animals have the ability to unhinge their jaws in order to fit their mouths around large objects, i think mankind was lucky to not get that in the evolution lottery. could you imagine how many fatalities we would have from people seeing how many marshmallows or carrots they could wedge into their faces? I digress. Anyway, the sandwich was too big for me to put into my mouth so i had the go at an angle, much like trying to move a sofa through a hallway and into a small room, it took some maneuvering.

the pastrami was amazing... like brined world peace. this may sound drug induced but i really felt like i had followed a rainbow to its end and found a jewish leprechaun standing over his pot of gold. he beckoned me to come forward and accept my price. i approached and instead of a pot of cold he had a pot filled with pastrami. i reached both hands into the pot, made a snowball like orb of salty meat and took a bite as big as my body allowed me. then i think the leprecohen gave me a high five or something, i dont remember.

the pastrami was amazing, the sandwich was good. i am one of those guys who loves meat, but i feel meat need a team. i feel that a good sandwich is more like a basketball team than a tennis star. You may have a star player, but no matter how good andrei kirilenko is he will never be able to defend five guys all on his own. the andrei kirilenko team would get last place every year. this sandwich needed some supporting characters. maybe a little tomato and lettuce. and maybe a little bread.