Impressions: Laurelhurst Market Sandwiches

By now it's obvious that I have a thing for sandwiches - in fact, if you were to judge me based on my posts you'd assume all I do is drink, eat sandwiches, and drown my evenings at izakayas. Of course, my reality is a far more mundane cycle of working and cooking typical fare at home, but come my days off I live the fancy sandwich dream. So when I heard that the legendary Viende folks were opening up a shop slinging their famous animal parts, unique sandwiches, and beginning Friday a full on restaurant, I had to make it a destination.

We showed up on their second day of business to a beehive of employees prepping the restaurant, but a blissfully empty meat counter. Their animal wares looked fantastic and the sandwiches offering said wares presented some excitingly creative options. I ordered two separate halves off their blackboard menu and Amy ordered a custom job built from a typical checkbox sheet. While it took a surprisingly long time to construct our meal, it was day two and I appreciated the care for the process. With outdoor seating the only option for sandwich customers we took a seat on the front stoop. After getting used to the grand sizes of most of the new local sandwich joints, these things felt absolutely feather light in my hands for $4 a pop, but whatever - it's the flavor that matters right?

Roast beef, pickled beets, mayo, and lettuce (pictured above)

The incredibly rare roast beef reminded me of the my grandfather's (the original goodist) rants about roast beef being over done these days - and it downright warmed my heart. Beefy notes shined through well with perfect beets (better than MCB's IMHO) at once foiling and complementing the generous portion of cow love. If I had one beef (ha!) with this model it was the roll being overly dense for my taste. A nice sandwich that I'd eagerly order again though.

Country pate, pickled red onion, and dijon on baguet

This thing was lightweight and tiny - as in maybe 3in long. However, they were generous with the pate (a combo of rabbit, pork, chicken livers and pistachios if I remember right), and it was deliciously rich, smooth, and mildly gamey with surprisingly soft pistachios. Pickled onions played the role of the more traditional cornichons well, with the plentiful slather of dijon brought much needed balance to the rich pate. Unfortunately, it's difficult to really enjoy a sandwich when the bread is so hard it custs a different spot in your mouth with every bite, but I'm sure they'll get this smoothed out as the days go on.

Amy's standard turkey sandwich

They really didn't skimp on this one - look at the size of this beast! The veggies were nice and ripe, the cheese wonderful, the bread perfectly soft, but the turkey was kinda odd. Amy assumed the turkey would be the well done roasted stuff in the case that looked somewhat firm and completely delicious, but this was something else entirely - we thought it was thin smoked ham with it's melty texture and plentiful fat. It was about this time that a friend from Carafe joined us and mentioned that she sometimes gets smoked turkey that's easily mistaken for ham, but even she was baffled by the pervasive fat streaks:

What do you think dear readers - ham or turkey? Tasted kinda like ham and certainly had enough fat - but the grain seemed a bit bird like. Either way, it didn't indicate smoked turkey on the order card and while the puzzle was fun enough Amy was disappointed. We didn't mention anything to the counter seeing as they were closing up for the day and done making sandwiches, but I might shoot them an email for clarification.

All and all for day two things looked promising - creative sandwiches, high quality ingredients, really friendly staff, and some gorgeous meats to take home. If they get the bread selection tweaked a bit and refrain from "guess the mystery meat" games I'll certainly pasture here often.

Laurelhurst Market

3155 East Burnside

Portland, OR 97214
Portlandfood.org discussion

Comments

[Brandon Rubesh]

I'm so there bro!

[Smokin' Bunny]

Mr. Goodist,

I was reading this review while eating a block of cheese and sharpening my knife. I almost swiped off one of paws when I got to the part where you reference some such beast as an MCB cooking with IMHO... What?... I asked my editor to look it up and he assured me that what you are referring to is the newest trend of not actually using real food to cook, but using chemicals and I wanted to warn you that mixing -

I - Iodine
Ma - Maganese
H - Hydrogen
O -Oxygen

Might be very dangerous for your audience. I'm all in favor of dead meat, and real foods, but when we start messing with chemical combinations we'd better be sure what we are really up to.

SB

[Tim Don]

Ha! Thanks for calling me out, I'm not sure what kind of strange lapse cascaded through my brain there:

MCB=Meat Cheese Bread, another famous Portland sandwich joint that happens to serve a BLB - bacon, lettuce, beets

IMHO=you'll have to ask a younger bunny about that one...