Knuckles Deli

This one was takeout. I was stuck on a call that started thirty minutes late and then ran the full hour anyway, so Shay drove down to Riverside Drive, picked up lunch, and brought it back to the office. He also took the pictures, which is more than I managed at Young Buck. He did all the prep on this stop. I showed up and ate.

Knuckles Deli is on Riverside in the East End, twelve minutes from the office, and Shay hated every one of them. If you come down Delta there's a five-way intersection situation through Columbia Tusculum that he would like deleted from the planet. Noted. Take Columbia Parkway.

The order was two Italians, sort of. The Italian Beef and the Italian. I would have ordered exactly the same two things, and I told him so.

Knuckles calls itself Cincinnati's home for Italian beef, so that's the sandwich to judge them on. You can get it wet, dipped, or dry. Shay got it dry with the jus on the side, which is the smart move for a sandwich that has to survive a car ride. A properly dipped Italian beef is one of the great things in life, but you have about thirty seconds to eat it before it turns into soup with a handle. Dry travels. Then you pour the jus over the top yourself, which is what he did.

Here's the thing. The beef is dry. Not travel-dry, either. Shay ate his half within twelve minutes of it being handed to him and it was already stringy. That costs them. But the flavor is completely there, and the pickled hot peppers on top are legit. They've got real heat, the kind that goes straight to the roof of your mouth and makes you stop talking for a second. Shay's phrase was that they burn your butt. I'll leave that where it is. With the jus poured on, the whole sandwich is about two points better than without it, and he'd order it again. So would I. This is kind of my neighborhood now and I've read about this place for months without going.

The Italian is a solid Italian. Prosciutto, salami, pepperoni, provolone, tomato, lettuce, oil, on the same crusty roll. Nothing to write home about, but nothing wrong with it either. Middle of the road. The problem is that Carl's exists, and the Godfather is the bar for an Italian in this town now, and Knuckles didn't clear it. Also, where's the giardiniera? It wasn't an option when Shay ordered. That's an opportunity sitting right there.

The potato salad was the surprise. Red potatoes, skin on, with a little Dijon in it. Not mustard-forward, just a hint, with some celery. It reminded me of a French-style potato salad I used to get back in Lexington. We spent an honestly embarrassing amount of time on mustard after that. Shay would eat it off a spoon. I made the case that the mustard industry has quietly out-innovated everybody. Beer cheese mustard, stone ground, whole grain, little paper packets of the fancy stuff. Poor man's caviar, Shay said. Fair.

The card

Bread: 8. Flaky on the outside, soft inside, and it held up. Shay's half of the beef sat there wet for a while and still had structure. Same roll across most of the menu from what we could tell. Good roll.

Build: 6. This is where they lost us. Neither sandwich was cut in half. Shay had to slice them himself when he opened the bag, which violates sandwich culture and tradition and I will not be talked out of that. The beef was also loose in the middle, like the center third wasn't attached to anything. Two pieces of bread and a pile. Now, that pile was enormous, and I get that they're hooking you up. But that's value, not build. The build was sloppy.

Mess: 7. Messiest stop so far, and we're both weird about our hands. Shay likes a nice clean hand. I don't want to wear a sandwich. You have to raise the bar a little for an Italian beef because mess is part of the deal, but you're washing up after this one. We got into the whole Man v. Food thing here, the idea that a sandwich needs to be running down your face to be good. Absolutely false. Nobody slaps a filet on their forehead. Costs too much.

Value: 8. Fourteen for the beef, fifteen for the Italian, so about thirty bucks for two lunches. Average. But the beef is a mountain of meat, and you get your own little ramekin of jus. Good value.

Talk: 10. As always.

The other part

The talk was the good part, which is the pattern now. Shay's been carrying a big idea on one of our accounts for a while, the kind where you put a name on a thing so everybody can finally argue about the same thing. This week it landed. A long walk for a ham sandwich, as Becky says. Sometimes that's the walk it takes.

Somewhere in there the conversation turned to me, and specifically to my inability to let go of control. The healthiest thing for Ample is probably for me to keep stepping further away from the day-to-day work. I know that. The team is good and getting better. Still makes me twitchy, though. Almost two decades of doing a thing a certain way will do that to you, and I don't have a fix yet beyond saying it out loud over a dry Italian beef.

That's the whole point of this thing, for what it's worth. The sandwich gets you to the table.

Knuckles. Get the Italian Beef, dry, jus on the side, and pour it over the top yourself. Bring napkins. Ask them to cut it.

On to Stop 07.

— Filed for breadandbutter.wtf