The ultimate sandwich tournament
Readers narrow field down to Final Four
By Jim Duncan
More than anything we eat, sandwiches are loaded with lore and even sanctimony. Humans have been eating meat with bread since the Neolithic Era, yet it’s commonly asserted that Hillel the Elder invented the sandwich in the Age of Augustus about the same time he enunciated what would become known as The Golden Rule. Since then, most of our favorite sandwiches have been served unto others with conflicting stories about how they were invented and especially about how best to make them.
Iowa and Indiana fight over which state created the first pork tenderloin. (Iowa did.) Several cities, on different continents, argue about where the first hamburger was served. In Elkader, Iowa, people debate whether they should be served “mit or mit-out” — “mit” being German for “with” and sautéed onions being the object in question. Some sandwiches have become beloved icons of entire states. North Carolina’s smoked pulled pork, Texas’ smoked beef brisket, West Virginia’s pepperoni rolls, Louisiana’s po’ boys, and Oklahoma’s chicken fried steak are all better known, and loved, than all those state’s birds, trees, flowers and Congressmen combined. Some sandwiches represent smaller regions like Monroe County Kentucky’s sliced pig shoulder, Hatch Valley New Mexico’s slopper (burger smothered in red and green chilies) and northwestern Nevada’s roast mutton.
Others are the provenances of cities. Philadelphians identify fiercely with their cheese steaks, as folks in Memphis do with their Elvises (fried peanut butter, bananas and bacon on white bread). Louisville has its hot brown (open-faced with turkey and bacon, pimentos and tomatoes, and Mornay sauce), Springfield, Ill., its horseshoe (open faced and topped with French fries and cheese), Chicago its Italian beef, Hollywood its French dip and New Orleans its muffuletta (marinated olive salad, capicola, salami, mortadella, Emmentaler and Provolone on Sicilian bread). Both Tampa and Miami adopted the Cubano (ham, roast pork, pickles and cheese on Cuban bread) as both Detroit and Cincinnati did Greek style chilidogs. Owensboro’s smoked mutton sandwiches draw visitors from hundreds of miles. And Knickerbockers don’t think you can make pastrami on rye anywhere, till you’ve made it there, in old New York.
So last winter a “munch bunch” of local chefs gathered at George Formaro’s (Django, Centro, South Union and Gateway Market Café) to exchange their favorite Des Moines sandwiches and discuss whether one best represents this town. That evolved into Cityview’s Ultimate Sandwich Tournament. Scores of additional food workers, food writers and alpha diners were asked to nominate sandwiches (other than burgers which were deemed a category all their own). Those were chewed down to eight groups of eight.
We seeded the eight sandwiches that received the most recommendations in different brackets. We also tried to keep types of sandwiches together so that early voting rounds could determine things like the city’s favorite pork tenderloin, etc. Cityview readers were then asked to determine winners in each group. After eight quarterfinalists were elected, slates were wiped clean and a second round of voting chose the Final Four.
Uncle Wendell’s Pulled Pork
Our Feed & Grain bracket featured Fourth Street Italian Beef’s namesake sandwich, Jesse’s Ember’s London broil, Trostel’s Greenbriar’s prime rib French dip, Maxie’s Reuben (corned beef and Swiss cheese on Jewish rye with 1,000 Island dressing), El Bait Shop’s blacked fish po’ boys, Chip’s rotisserie chicken BAT (bacon, avocade and tomato), Proof’s vegetarian falafel on flatbread, and Sbrocco’s veggie (grilled eggplant, squash, tomato and goat cheese). Maxie’s Reuben won the bracket.
Six authentic barbecue specialties led our Smokehouse region: Uncle Wendell’s pulled pork shoulder; Chef’s Kitchen’s smoked prime rib; Jethro’s pulled chicken with Bob Gibson (white) sauce; The Q’s brisket with Gate’s style sauce; Smokey D’s pulled pork, whose chefs have won more major BBQ competitions than any other Iowans; and Woody’s brisket. They were joined by Dos Rios’ spit roasted pork tacos on scratch made tortillas and Court Avenue Brewing Company’s pork braised in Black Hawk Ale. Uncle Wendell’s pulled pork slopped up the most votes, moving into the quarterfinals and then the Final Four.
Wendell Garretson is a dues paying member of old school regional cuisine. He learned Cajun craft at Simo’s Cafisto, competed on the competitive barbecue circuit and toiled at the baker‘s craft. After opening a small bakery in Sherman Hill, he built a customer base working farmers’ markets where he added wood smoked barbecue to his menu. After moving into a café on Ingersoll, his business became more of a BBQ than a bakery, complete with a neon pig and jars of Kool Aid pickles.
Uncle Wendell’s does the basics of superior Q quite well. Meats are crusted with smoke rings and tender meat. Best of all, you can order them sliced, from whatever end or direction you like — even at rush hour. Pulled pork is made from pig butts smoked with hickory, pulled off the bone and mixed. Sandwiches include crunchy skin as well as tender meat from near the bone. They are served on thick slices of homemade challah. Want your bread sliced to half its thickness? No problem. Try asking for that at a chain. Wendell supports the “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” program and also keeps an all-star lineup of Iowa-made BBQ sauces, with Russ and Frank’s of West Des Moines serving as house sauce. Vinegar based sauces are also available.
B & B Grocery Meat & Deli’s Pork Tenderloin
Our Links section featured four link sausage sandwiches: George the Chili King’s Coney Island (the chili recipe is locked in a bank vault); Royal Mile’s Ingelhoffer (a homemade banger with ham and Maytag white cheddar on a hoagie bun); Django’s Django dog (homemade boudin blanc sausage with house made bacon, blue cheese, cole slaw, Dijon mayo and foie gras on challah roll); and homemade cevapi sausage from Royal Grill. Open Sesame’s kibbeh on pita, Gazali’s gyros, Los Laureles’ chorizo tacos, and La Pena’s birria (pulled roast goat on scratch masa tacos) rounded out that region. George the Chili King’s Coney Island moved on to the quarterfinals.
A Pork Tenderloin bracket featured fried tenderloins from B & B Grocery Meat & Deli, Smitty’s, Mr. Bibb’s, Kelly’s Little Nipper, and Crouse Café. They battled it out with meat loaf sandwiches from BOS and the Drake Diner, plus Cosi Cucina’s wood grilled chicken melt (with tomato, basil & mozzarella, and a sun-dried tomato spread on fire baked flatbread). B & B’s pork tenderloin moved on to the Final Four, receiving the highest vote total of any sandwich in any bracket, in both the first and second rounds, reminding us that the south side political machine knows how to get out the vote.
In the heart of Sevastopol, B & B Grocery Meat & Deli is the city’s oldest food establishment dating to 1922. It’s also an old fashioned political hangout like no other in town. It’s difficult on occasions to tell the owners from the customers as so many people move behind the counters as if they work there. Their food service is left over from another era, too. This is one of the few places in town to fill nostalgic orders for things like pig’s heads, carcass beef, whole hogs, headcheeses and souse, or whole slabs of bacon. They only use pure pork, un-injected with double digit percentages of sodium solutions like that sold in our major supermarkets.
B & B’s pork tenderloins might well be the only ones in the state that go directly from butcher block to deep fat fryer in a single process. They also bread “tenderloins” of chorizo, turkey, chicken and beef, but their pork tenderloins are uniquely literal.
“Most ‘pork tenderloins’ aren’t even made with pork tenderloin,” said partner-butcher John Brooks. “That’s why we advertise ‘real pork tenderloin.’ We only use real tenderloin from pure pork. Every other place I’ve been to just tenderizes the entire loin,” he explained.
To clarify, there are three main parts of a pork loin: the blade end, which tends to be fatty; the sirloin end, which tends to be bony; and the tenderloin in the middle, which is the leanest and most expensive part. That’s why most pork tenderloin comes from the whole loin and also why it needs to be tenderized — so that the texture seems somewhat consistent. B & B’s tenderloin is the real deal, with a wild card in its hand.
Tasty Tacos’ Original Taco
Eight distinctive sandwiches with lots of homemade breads faced off in the Deli regional: La Mie’s grilled cheese (Brie and smoked Provolone) on country Italian bread, which more than one nominator described as the best grilled cheese sandwich in the world; South Union‘s hot Italian (ham, roast beef, turkey, capacola, pepperoni, mozzarella, mayo on garlic focaccia); Lucca’s Cajun grilled tuna on their homemade ciabatta; Star Bar’s Niman Ranch Jambon Royale ham and cheese with homemade mango chili jam; Maccabee Deli’s “Maccabee” (corned beef, roast beef, sauerkraut and sk’hug — an Israeli red pepper spread — on Bake Shoppe’s rye); Palmer’s “Marshall Field” (ham, turkey, bacon, Swiss, cheddar, lettuce, tomato and Thousand Island dressing on house baked marble bread); Centro’s chicken Caesar on South Union ciabatta; and Gateway Market Café’s lobster shrimp salad roll on South Union challah. In a close vote, South Union’s hot Italian moved to the quarterfinal round.
Our Loose Meat region featured several traditional sandwiches that have been feeding Des Moines for more than six decades: grinders from The Tavern and Tursi’s Latin King; Coney Island’s beef burger; Tasty Tacos’ original fried taco; and Maid-Rite’s namesake. Relative newcomers Paula’s beef rite and a housemade sausage grinder from Mojo’s joined them, along with an at large bid for Hessen Haus’ Bismarck (chopped roast pork, sautéed mushrooms and onions, au jus and Swiss cheese on a large French roll). Tasty Tacos’ original taco moved into the quarterfinals and also prevailed to enter the Final Four.
With a $500 loan, Richard and Antonia Mosqueda opened their first Tasty Tacos in 1961 at the corner of Euclid & Searle. A couple years later they moved to a small venue near their present store on East Grand Avenue. Today, Antonia supervises six children, who own six local Tasty Tacos employing several spouses and five grand children full time. The family’s long time motto is “Nada Es Imposible” or “Nothing Is Impossible,” and it remains the driving force behind the business.
“The original taco is by far our best seller and the item for which we are known,” said third-generation Josh Mosqueda.
“It’s a flour shell that we make from scratch, so they differ in size and shape. It’s deep fat fried, in canola oil, and stuffed with secretly seasoned ground beef, beans, Wisconsin cheddar cheese and lettuce. I can’t tell you anything more about it without getting in trouble,” he explained.
It also still sells for just $2.75.
A Taste of Italy’s Meatball
Our Italian Sausage bracket was packed with traditional powers, including four sandwiches that had been around for half a century: Terry’s Special (broiled homemade Italian sausage, grilled onions and peppers, Mozzarella and Provolone) from Chuck’s; Gino’s stromboli (meat, marinara and cheese baked on rolled Italian dough), and Italian sausage sandwiches from Mr. V’s and La Pizza House (which closed during the competition). Although they are less than half a century old, sausage sandwiches from the Norwood Bar & Grill (the only place in town that defiantly uses ketchup) and Noodles, and a stromboli from Mezzodi’s all have traditions that date back many decades. An at large bid for El Chisme’s chicarron tacos (uniquely made in two different regional styles, with scratch tortillas) rounded out that bracket. In the most competitive of all groupings, Gino’s stromboli edged out Mr. V’s Italian sausage by the slimmest margin, with several others close behind.
A Meatball - Banh Mi section was led by five meatball sandwiches, from Noah’s, Mama Lacona’s, Christopher’s, Baratta’s, and A Taste of Italy. They were joined by three banh mi (roast pork, charcuterie, shredded carrots, cilantro and dressings on baguettes made with rice and wheat flours), from La Paris, Le’s Chinese BBQ and Pho All Seasons. Taste of Italy’s meatball sandwich moved on to the quarterfinals and also to the Final Four.
A Taste of Italy is a small strip mall grocery store and deli in Clive. It has an incredible food pedigree, being founded by Cindy Cox, the wife of a Graziano, and currently owned by Todd Ferin. A century ago, Graziano Brothers and E. Ferin Grocery were competing markets on the near southside. Ferin’s Clive store has evolved into more of a deli and less of a grocery store since it opened. Because of the popularity of its sandwiches, shelf space has been given up for tables. You can still find plenty of imported Italian delicacies, cheeses, salami and local Italian products from Gino’s, Orlondo’s and of course Graziano’s.
Ferin and store manager Bill Casner run their sandwich business like a neighborhood bar without the alcohol. The chef often serves his creation, and pretty much everybody knows your name. Their four-meatball sandwich costs no more than one at a Subway chain. It’s made with Amadeo’s Fancy Bread, Fontanini’s meatballs (beef-pork-Romano cheese), sweet and hot peppers, and Provolone. It’s hot pressed until the roll crisps and the cheese melts. Andrea Bocelli sings almost continuously in the background. “Amo credo e so” (that this is one great sandwich.)
Which sandwich is for you?
Now it’s up to you to pick Des Moines’ Ultimate Sandwich. No matter which one wins, the things Des Moines prefers to pack into its bread have revealed a lot about the character of our city. First, this is a traditional town. Of the eight sectional winners, only Uncle Wendell’s, South Union and A Taste of Italy had not been around for at least six decades. Moreover, Uncle Wendell’s was in a category in which everyone was a relative newcomer, Taste of Italy has family food roots that go back more than a century, and South Union was inspired by Italian bakeries in 19th century Zootsville, and by much older Sicilian traditions.
Secondly, neighborhood chauvinism is still rife here even after 50 years of suburban sprawl. From the south side’s innumerable versions of homemade Italian sausage, to Second Avenue’s mastery of Asian charcuterie, to Lee Township’s tradition of great tavern kitchens and Mexican taquerias, the city’s sandwich lore is written in wards rather than chapters. The voting bore that out.
Finally, we’re pretty democratic — our favorite sandwiches come from fine dining restaurants as well as dives, bakeries, Mom & Pop grocery stores and butcher shops. We’re still as provincial as a pork tenderloin, that icon of Iowa that is virtually unknown outside the Midwest. And we’re also as nostalgic as a mid 20th century drive-in, as cosmopolitan as Vietnamese charcuterie and as sophisticated as a French patisserie.
This is one fine place to eat lunch. CV
Captions:
Pamala Henning and Wendell Garretson, owners of Uncle Wendell’s Bakery & BBQ, encourage everyone to try their pulled pork sandwich.
Fifth-generation owner Jennifer Brooks shows off B & B’s Pork Tenderloin.
The Tasty Tacos family — Josh Mosqueda, Kari Lopez, Andre Mosqueda, Antonio Mosqueda, Terry Mosqueda, Linda Mosqueda-Blair, Jenni Gardner, Ron Mosqueda and Rick Mosqueda — recently opened their new location in Ankeny, 2401S.E. Delaware Drive.
A Taste of Italy’s store manager Bill Casner and owner Todd Ferin give their meatball sandwich two thumbs up.
