Something to read while you stew over the Jets game.
The sandwich: Beef sausage hero, Ma Peche, 56th bet. 5th and 6th in Manhattan.
The construction: Beef sausage on baguette with jalapeno mustard-relish and fried shallots.
Important background information: My second trip to a Momofuku restaurant in two weeks after never having been to one before — that alone should speak to the quality of the pork buns.
Actually obtaining a sandwich to go from the Midtown installment requires some foresight: You have to order online the day before or on the morning you want your sandwich. After the pork bun experience I knew I had to have one of these, but it took me a while because I never remember lunch until around noon, and by noon it’s too late to order.
It felt cool to order it, like I knew some sort of secret code. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like it might be needlessly complicated. Do you have to special order the sausage or something?
What it looks like:
How it tastes: Before I even bit into the beef sausage sandwich I knew it was going to be a letdown after the pork buns. Granted, there are some Hall of Fame sandwiches that would be letdowns after the pork buns, but looking at it — just a sausage sitting atop a mustardy ingredient goo on a piece of French bread — I didn’t feel the same pull I did from the glimmering, fatty pork.
The sausage itself was very good. No flavor stands out besides the obvious sausage flavor, but it’s not overwhelmingly greasy or processed-tasting at all. A good solid, sausagey sausage. And though it was beef, in terms of taste I’d say it seemed more toward the Italian side of the sausage spectrum than the German side. It had a nice snappy casing and was well-prepared.
(I know a guy who worked for a while as a fromagiere — a professional cheese taster in a restaurant. Dude was incredible; I never realized anyone could know so much about cheese. He could taste cheese and, in many cases, identify the county from which it came. I wonder if there’s an equivalent job for sausage. There are so many variations of sausage, it’d be good to have an expert catalog them all in some fashion. I guess, though, there are a lot of bad sausages out there, so it wouldn’t all be glorious.)
The bread itself was fresh and flaky, but it might have been slightly too hearty for a sausage sandwich. This is a matter of taste, of course, but the bread was so thick that you either had to take a huge bite to get bread and sausage together or take smaller bites that were mostly sausage staggered with mostly bread. I’m here for the full package, please.
Same thing is true for the ingredient goo. It was itself delicious — easily the highlight of the sandwich — but it got buried so deep down in the crevice of the bread that it was near-impossible to get a bite of sausage with adequate jalapeno mustard-relish on it.
They say it’s cucumbers, jalapenos and mustard on the menu, for what it’s worth, but obviously I know what mustard and relish taste like combined. And this tastes a lot like that. Those cucumbers must be pickled. Indisputably good, though — I don’t really care what they call it if it’s good. The mustard had a nice bite to it and the relish part added sweetness.
The jalapenos brought a little flavor, but not too much heat. I rectified that with the hot sauce they included on the side. Word is there were crispy fried shallots in there, and if I strain hard I can remember at least a little bit of crunch, but I think most of them were drowned in goo and rendered uncrispy.
In all, it was a collection of really delicious elements and, truth be told, a very good sandwich — some sort of more uppity take on the hot dog, really. It just felt like it had the potential to be much more if they were better distributed or in better proportion. As it was, it was a nice sampling of good flavors but not a single, cohesive, transcendent sandwich.
What it’s worth: Cost $10 and a five-block walk. Probably worth it, though next time I’ve got lunch planned out far enough in advance to order it from Ma Peche, I’ll probably try the banh mi or the noodles.
How it rates: 75 out of 100.
Of course, like I said, most people I know don’t throw a lot of house parties. Or if they do, they don’t invite me.
I hope you read English because my French is 
The Mets apparently aren’t going to have a guy coming off a crappy season play Santa. John Maine and Mike Pelfrey both assumed the roles after career years, Francoeur earned it with 308 plate appearances far beyond his usual production. Somewhat predictably, all three regressed the following season. Pelfrey also suffered at the hands of a terrible defense behind him.
Today is the last day to purchase Four Loko legally in New York, so stock up if you’re into mixing dangerous amounts of caffeine with lots of booze and you’re too lazy to mix Red Bull and vodka.
A former first-round pick, Beato apparently throws hard, though he hasn’t struck out a whole lot of guys in the Minors. He pitched as a starter in the Orioles’ system without much success from 2006 to 2009, but flourished after a move to the Double-A bullpen in 2010. In 59 2/3 innings over 43 appearances, Beato enjoyed career bests in K:BB, WHIP and ERA. He should compete for a role in the Mets’ bullpen in Spring Training.
When he signed a seven-year, $142 million deal with the Red Sox last night, Crawford became the seventh-highest paid player in baseball. It should be noted that of the six players ahead of him — Alex Rodriguez, Ryan Howard, Joe Mauer, C.C. Sabathia, Johan Santana and Mark Teixeira — at least half of their contracts already appear to be overpays and potential long-term albatrosses.
Tedquarters 