Carl's Deli

The setup: a quarterly review, a table under an old-timey awning on a residential street, and two sandwiches we split down the middle because that's the system. You order two, you trade halves. Shay takes his review seriously. So do I.

Carl's is the kind of place you walk past a hundred times before you notice it. Inside it's a proper neighborhood deli — big sandwich board, a wall of specials, the whole thing. This is the kind of restaurant I'd want to own. No concept, no brand story. Just a counter and somebody who cares.

The Salami Mommy. Salami, turkey, cucumber, red onion, cream cheese. Simple, fresh, crisp. The cucumber does real work here. And the bread — soft, not over-toasted. I have a standing complaint about people who toast sandwich bread into shrapnel; you bite it and the roof of your mouth is done for the day. Cap'n Crunch rules apply. You get one bowl. Carl's bread respects that.

The Godfather. The Italian, and you don't mess around with the Italian. Prosciutto, pepperoni, mozzarella, provolone, pizza sauce, oil, on what's basically a sourdough baguette. This is the opposite sandwich. The Salami Mommy is clean and simple; the Godfather has layers of depth. The sauce is delicious, the pepperoni carries flavor, and the banana peppers bring a little tang and acid that pushes the whole thing forward. The cheese is chewy, which gives you texture instead of just smooshed meat.

If I'm ranking them: the Godfather is the better sandwich, but the Salami Mommy is the one I'd eat every week. One's an event. The other's a habit.

Here's the thing about these lunches, though. The sandwich is maybe a third of it. The other two-thirds was a performance review that ran heavy — a good one, a 4.6 out of 5 with a perfect score on resilience that I've literally never seen before — and then the conversation that always follows reviews: who's drowning, who's carrying too much, who needs to be told it's okay to put the work down. Some of it was hard. People confide heavy things at a deli table they wouldn't say in a conference room, and I think that's the point of the table.

It's nice to have the band back together. That was the real review.

Anyway. Carl's Deli. Get the Godfather. Split it with somebody.

— Filed for breadandbutter.wtf