Young Buck Deli

Every sandwich stop so far has been a one-on-one with somebody on my team. This one broke the pattern — I grabbed lunch with Sean Davis, the co-host of my podcast Blood, Sweat & Tokens. Same idea, different audience. It's a good excuse to eat.

Young Buck Deli is a hole-in-the-wall in Over-the-Rhine, in the old Holtman's spot. We know Chef Caitlin from way back — in fact, Ample built cookingwithcaitlin.com more than a decade ago, back when she'd come cook for us in the office. Small town, this.

I ordered The New Deal: ham, mortadella, salami, homemade ricotta, pickled red onion, lettuce, vinegar, all on a big fat slab of homemade focaccia. Yes, I ordered another Italian. I seem to always order the Italian. I regret nothing.

The focaccia is the story here. Super soft, great flavor, and the bread alone is a 10 out of 10. The ricotta was excellent — thicker and pastier than most, which I liked. The pickled onions were awesome. But somewhere in the middle the bread broke, the whole thing started falling apart, and a little too much mayo did it no favors. Build: 8. Mess: 5, though I admit I'm grading as a bearded man. You try eating a sandwich that falls apart with a marmot on your face.

Sean went the other way: the Classic Club. Ham, turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayo. No tricks, no gimmicks. He gave the bread a 9, the build a 7 (it fell apart too), mess a 6, and value a 4 — because this is the most expensive sandwich around here. It's a twenty-dollar sandwich and the sides are six. We dropped about forty-five bucks for two people, no drinks, standing room only. The card up top is the two of us averaged, which is why Value lands at 6: I gave it an 8 and he gave it a 4, and we are both right.

Which, honestly, is a good sign. It's expensive because it's packed. Good for them.

The potato salad was the sleeper hit — skin on, with a mustard-horseradish thing going on. Get the potato salad.

Scoring this thing is mostly an excuse anyway. The rubric is bread, build, mess, value, and company — and company is where this one ran away with it. We talked shop for forty minutes: the podcast, what season two could look like, whether we could build real problems end to end on the show. That's the whole point of this project. Sandwiches get you in the door. The conversation is the meal.

One confession: I was so busy eating and talking that I forgot to take pictures of the actual sandwiches. Annoying. So the photo up top is not mine — it's Young Buck's own, lifted from this post on instagram.com/youngbuck_delicatessen. Neither the New Deal nor the Classic Club is in the frame. Go look at the rest of it, then go eat there.

Get the New Deal. Split it with somebody — it's big enough and it's twenty dollars.

On to Stop 06.

— Filed for breadandbutter.wtf