Sloppy sandwich criticism

I was willing to give Brett Anderson a bit of a pass for his surprisingly kind review of Mahony's during his roast beef po-boy tour. My impression of Mahony's (and this is very nearly a consensus view among those whose opinions I've solicited) is that it's more or less a gimmick designed to sell overpriced sandwiches to transplants, tourists, and Tulane students.

So I was suspicious after seeing Anderson's review but decided to let it go on the assumption that this tour of roast beef he's on is meant more as a celebration of the ubiquity of the sandwich than an exercise in actual criticism. And yet today we find Anderson slamming two iconic neighborhood joints in the very next installment.

In a way I'm relieved to see some strong opinion make its way into this series. Week after week of "Try this great sandwich" would start to drag, after all. But having said that, what is Anderson talking about here?

To read this description, one would think that Parkway had gotten the form exactly right. Parkway’s beef suffers the opposite problem of Domilise’s: it’s cooked to such moist tenderness there’s little texture to it at all - and surprisingly little flavor.

The bread on the Parkway sandwich I tried last week had already been soaked and steamed halfway to paste by the time I unwrapped it.

The po-boy couldn’t hold its shape past four bites. A more mannerly person would have finished hers with a knife and fork. I proceeded in the manner of an undomesticated primate presented with a bowl of porridge.

I took no satisfaction in the 14 napkins required to clean myself afterwards. This is perhaps evidence that I don’t understand what some people love about their roast beef po-boys.

Firstly, I'm surprised at the "surprisingly little flavor" remark. On a recent visit to Parkway I found the roast beef so rich and garlicky that I was forced to admit that I preferred it to my neighborhood favorite Tracey's. Furthermore, a description like this ordinarily would indicate that Parkway has gotten the form exactly right. Tender debris roast beef and gravy mess everywhere, big mess of napkins, sounds okay to me. But Anderson says he doesn't understand why people like their sandwiches that way in the first place.

And that might be the problem right there... except that it isn't. Or at least it wasn't when Anderson visited Mahony's.

Wicks cooks Angus beef as a pot roast, braising it in red wine with vegetables and herbs. The resulting meat is so tender it could probably be consumed with a straw. It also doesn’t suffer the curse of underseasoning that requires too many roast beef po-boys to be brought to life with hot sauce. Served between halves of toasted, sesame freckled Leidenheimer bread, mine tasted more than a little like beef bourgnuignon, the wine imparting an unmistakable tang.

It’s messy not because the bread turns to mush but because the tender pulls of meat struggle to find traction, slipping out the back end and onto the butcher paper, waiting to be scooped up between thumb and Zapp’s potato chip.

I don't get it. Here we have Anderson praising the messy tender meat he his forced to stuff into his face using his "thumb and Zapp's potato chip" which we can only assume is a mode of opposition (or is it apposition) not available to "an undomesticated primate." But somehow the same sort of experience with Parkway's sandwich is something too low for him to understand. The reasoning here is about as solid as a dripping glob of debris gravy and mayonnaise.

Anyway I do hope Anderson finds somewhere to eat that serves a Parkway style po-boy that includes the amount of "flavor" he's looking for. If this search for the city's best roast beef ends up settling on Mahony's we'll have to launch a full investigation.

*As a side note I would like to challenge all the food writers and commenters out there to go at least one month without using the word "flavor" at all in their reviews. Readers want to know what a food tastes like in terms that actually explain things to them. Is it creamy? peppery? gritty? bready? buttery? sugary? Does it remind you of something else you've eaten? Is it Xtreme, or perhaps Kickin'? Is it part of this complete breakfast? Just tell us something about it. Anything other than it "has flavor" or "lacks flavor" or "the flavors are big" or bold or any other such unhelpful nonsense.