Having a bicycle and an unexpected free Saturday opens up huge swatches of the five boroughs for sandwich exploration. John Brown smokehouse sits somewhere between the towering Citigroup building and some glimmering high-rise waterfront apartments in an area of Long Island City that would mostly be faded yellow squares in SimCity — glass installers, metalwork, taxicab equipment. It doesn’t feel unsafe or uninteresting, it just doesn’t happen to be a populous thoroughfare filled with restaurants and bars. And that’s fine; many of the best sandwiches live off the beaten path.
The sandwich: The P.B.L.T. from John Brown, 10-43 44th Drive, Long Island City.
The construction: Pork belly, lettuce, tomato and mayo on Texas toast, which here means very thick-cut but untoasted white bread, not the prepared version of Texas toast that is grilled with butter.
Important background information: Everything I read about John Brown before I went recommended the burnt ends sandwich, one of their specialties. But I figured if I already read plenty about the burnt ends sandwich, why not introduce the Internet to something new? There may or may not be a hog shortage coming, friends, and there’ll be plenty of time to eat brisket once we’re priced out of pork.
What it looks like:
How it tastes: Man. Oh, man. Holy s@#$.
OK, let me start with the simple stuff while I collect myself. Lettuce, tomato and mayo don’t sound especially exciting on a sandwich, I understand. Boring, even. But those ingredients, in combination, present a delightful and versatile array of light flavors and textures as well as a certain grounding quality. They are crisp, moist, creamy, summery and familiar.
The bread, fresh and thick, is so soft that it wears under the considerable weight of the meat and toppings. It’s sweet and delicious, but if I had one quibble with the construction of this sandwich it would be that the bread is not quite up to the task of containing the rest of the sandwich. No matter; paper towels are available on every table. And, really, if you’re at a barbecue restaurant hoping to keep your hands clean, you and I have nothing in common.
There are two barbecue sauces on the table at John Brown: A vinegary, peppery mild version and a fiery hot one. I used a touch of both. They’re great.
Now on to it:
It’s the pork! The pork, the pork, the pork, the pork.
Pork belly comes from the same part of the pig as our American bacon, which is likely what inspired this sandwich. But this pork belly is not prepared like bacon: It’s slow smoked but not cured, and it’s cut in thick hunks rather than sliced thin and fried. The result is a hearty, fatty, smoky meat. It’s just a touch chewy but not in any way tough, providing just enough resistance against the teeth and jaw to force you to slow down and enjoy the awesome, awesome flavor of the sandwich. Think meat stripped from perfectly prepared smoked spare ribs. Oh it’s so good.
There’s some talk that word of a forthcoming pork shortage could be overblown, but I wouldn’t risk it. In fact, upon finishing the sandwich, I considered going back for a second before realizing it would make the bike ride back to Manhattan unbearable. Got to get that pork in me while I can.
I took the long way home and biked north along Vernon Boulevard toward the Triborough grinning like a madman. With Manhattan’s skyline looming on my left and the 59th St. Bridge dead ahead, I reveled in society’s grand accomplishments, and all the astonishing things we have done with pork.
What it’s worth: The P.B.L.T. cost $11, which is a lot. But it’s a full meal even without any of the awesome-looking available sides.
The rating: 95 out of 100. All sample-size caveats apply and smoked meat can be fickle, but this is one of the best sandwiches I can remember eating in New York City.
Without delving too deeply into glory-days stuff, I’ll say that the last time I saw a football team’s offense look so utterly inept and overmatched, I was in high school. Our first two quarterbacks and two of our starting offensive linemen were hurt and our starting tailback was suspended, and every kid on the opposing New Hyde Park team looked like he was 27 years old and on steroids. We tried to resort to mind games, up to and including having the entire line set up in our stances singing “I’m a Little Teapot” before the snap, but their body games consistently defeated us.
Everything I wrote last week about the pervasive uncertainty and sample-size issues that should dominate football analysis still applies, and I understand that the Niners’ defense appears legit. But yesterday we got 50 more plays’ worth of evidence with which to judge this Jets’ offense, and just about every one them suggested it is awful.
But then they’re still 2-2.
Via email, Rob V. writes:
Do you get unsolicited comments/advice/critique on your facial hair? I have a pretty solid beard going at the moment, and pretty much everyone I see points out the gray whiskers that seem to be winning out, or that there is a little spot that is a bit sparse. Others love to call me Wolfman Jack or Grizzly Adams. I mean, come on, right? I don’t go around commenting on other people’s appearances in a mocking tone. Well, not to their faces anyway. Can’t a dude grow some hairs without it turning into a conversation piece?
Well, I never have facial hair beyond a few days’ stubble, so not really. Sometimes I’ll go four or five days without shaving and someone will be all, “oh hey, growing a beard?” And I’ll say, “nah, just lazy,” and that’ll be about the end of it. I wasn’t trying to hide it, but just to clarify: The mustache I wore to interview Keith Hernandez yesterday was fake. It was my good fake so I understand how it fooled some people.
I cannot grow a mustache. I have a very thick beard that comes in fast but only a few lame mustache hairs. Unfortunately, every facial-hair style I’d ever want to fashion requires a decent mustache, so it limits me to a few days’ stubble and clean-shavenness. Such is the irony of my biography. Due to the regularity with which I have to do video stuff for SNY.tv, I haven’t actually tried growing anything out in years. So maybe my mustache is better than it once was. That’s the hope I hold on to.
I do, however, provide unsolicited comments, advice and criticism on people’s facial hair all the time. If I haven’t seen a friend in a couple of months and the next time I do, he’s got some sort of chin beard going, I’ll say, “You’ve got some sort of chin beard going, eh?” Usually I’m encouraging, though, and tell everyone they’re great beard guys even if they’re not necessarily great beard guys.
So to answer your question: No, some dude cannot grow some hairs without it turning into a conversation piece. That’s a sweet beard, and what the hell else are we going to talk about? You’re really a great beard guy, Rob.
https://twitter.com/kmflemming/status/251690874793230337
What? Yes! Of course they are! Bananas are delicious, and some form of peanut butter and banana sandwich has been favored by both David Wright and Elvis Presley. I repeat: David Wright and Elvis Presley.
Oh man, I just got an idea for a new Don Berg painting.
https://twitter.com/connallon/status/251690255336476672
OK: Are we talking homemade pizza bagels on real bagels here or Bagel Bites? Either way they’re in first place pretty easily. Pizza bites come second, and beg the question: Why aren’t we serving more foods in bastardized, microwaveable egg-roll wrappers?
I’ll put pizza Hot Pockets and Elio’s Pizza down for a toss-up because I haven’t had either since roughly seventh grade. I bet I’d prefer Elio’s today because occasionally I get a waft of something that smells just like Elio’s Pizza and I crave Elio’s Pizza and that never ever happens when anything smells like Hot Pockets.
https://twitter.com/Devon2012/status/251689030171893760
Yes, definitely. I don’t even understand what the downside is. I don’t get to enjoy sleep anymore? But the only reason I really like sleeping is because it staves off all those side effects of not sleeping. So if I wasn’t ever going to be tired and the rest wasn’t going to help my back feel better, why not? I could watch so much TV! Also, I’d love to be able to get out in the middle of the night now that I live in the city. Manhattan is awesome when it’s quiet.
I’m a pretty terrible sleeper and always have been. By now I’ve figured what I need to do to fall asleep, but for most of my life my mind would start racing irrationally after I went to bed and I would find myself staring at the ceiling in the dark for hours. There were times in high school and college when I’d go two or three days without actually sleeping more than an hour or two.
https://twitter.com/Bert1335/status/251688595931410432
There’s a place for all of them, but straight up? Crunchy. Call me old fashioned.
Statler or Waldorf. Sitting in my tower judging things and laughing about it is pretty much what I do here. In college, my roommates and I set up our couches stadium-style. We’d throw parties, and my roommate Will and I would sit up on the highest level couch demanding people bring us drinks and then mocking them. It was great. Girls really liked us, fellas.
https://twitter.com/omniality/status/251688238610259970
Face, because I also want that nickname. Also, the actor who played Faceman was named Dirk Benedict.
https://twitter.com/CatsmeatP_P/status/251688930087419904
I’m so glad Catsmeat asked this. The 90s-party phenomenon fascinates me, partly because it makes me feel tragically old for the first time in my life and partly because I feel I am almost always more appropriately dressed for a 90s party than people actually on their way to a 90s party. Right now I’m wearing a plaid shirt that’s way too loose-fitting to be trendy, some ratty brown pants and Doc Martens. Groups of kids on their way to 90s parties always seem to feature a bunch of people dressed for raves and a couple guys in old flannels with ripped jeans and Nirvana t-shirts. DAMMIT I WAS THERE AND THAT’S NOT HOW IT WAS!
There are a lot of 90s fashions begging to be revisited for 90s parties. Jnco jeans, for instance. Another good option is to just go as Dr. Dre, wearing a black White Sox hat, a black button down and black jeans, with optional black denim jacket.
But since I know you to be a great beard guy, Catsmeat, I’m going to say you should definitely go as this guy from the “Black Hole Sun” video. Not everyone would get it, but everyone who did would be a) really impressed and b) probably pretty cool.
https://twitter.com/MetsLegacy/status/251701574416605185
An outfielder and it’s not close. Josh Thole struggled this year but I don’t think the Mets should bail on him quite yet; he’s still only 25, he’s a lefty-hitting catcher, before this season he always got on base at a reasonable clip, and he can catch the knuckleball. None of those qualities is easily replaced. I don’t know if his offensive nosedive this season is related to the concussion or plain old-fashioned randomness, but either way the Mets should keep him around for 2013. Is he a Hall of Famer? No. Is he even an every day big-league catcher? I’m not sure. But with a decent righty-hitting complement (Kelly Shoppach, for example), Thole’s a fine low-cost option behind the plate to allow them to focus their offseason efforts elsewhere.
Like, say, in the outfield. Right now the Mets’ best and arguably only Major League outfielder under contract for 2013 is Mike Baxter. And Baxter’s resume is barely 200 at-bats long. A healthy Kirk Nieuwenhuis should help somehow too. But that’s two and they both hit left-handed. They need to bring in multiple outfielders this offseason.
Yes? No? Maybe? Depends on the deal?
https://twitter.com/TommBauer/status/251690470885961728
Two reasons: 1) They got our hopes way up and then fell apart, so we had time to reset those expectations. I suspect if they came out of the gate 5-13 like they did last year and had been 67-71 since, we’d be discussing this season in very different terms. But then if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, etc.
2) LOLMets
https://twitter.com/jeffpaternostro/status/251688009676775425
I don’t know if I can name all of them off the top of my head. Obviously Mike Piazza represents the top of the line for Let’s Go Mets rally-video stars. I know Kevin James’ is terrifying and Chris Rock’s is enjoyable, the caveat being that I find most things Chris Rock does enjoyable. John Cena’s doesn’t really do it for me. I’m not a big pro-wrestling guy and I find the way he’s flexing both distracting and emasculating.
I do wish more of the celebrities could actually nail the appropriate rhythm of the Let’s Go Mets chant. It’s not like it’s hard. Why does Kevin James feel the need to syncopate?
One of the many cool things about R.A. Dickey is that you just know he’s as psyched about Ralph Macchio’s endorsement as we are. I think it’d be cool if Paul Pfeiffer from the Wonder Years came out in support of Dickey too, both because then people would inevitably assume it meant Marilyn Manson was an R.A. Dickey fan and because you have to figure Paul Pfeiffer is true SABR. Turns out the actor is a lawyer in New York now. Could easily be a Dickey fan.
Via email, Chris M writes:
What do you think of teams still having champagne celebrations for only clinching a wild card birth, considering under the new playoff format the wild card only guarantees a spot in a one game playoff?
I personally think the idea of this extra wild card being considered an additional “playoff berth” has been a farce from the beginning. A one-game playoff is not a spot in “the playoffs.” There is still only one wild card team that makes the playoffs, all they did was add a play-in game to get the wild card spot.
It’s kind of silly, but who wouldn’t seek out every possible excuse for a Champagne celebration? I feel like I should get one every time I come home from the gym. Plus, at the Major League level they seem like the type of thing that was once special but has now become so standardized that every team is constantly trying to outdo its predecessor with the biggest and most extravagant, like it’s Chipper Jones’ Super Sweet 16 or something.
As for the second part of the email, it’s all semantic, but I do think the actual Wild Card winner is the team that wins the play-in game, not both teams that clinch a spot in the play-in game. Right? Is that correct? Does it matter?
In any case, it’s still stupid: It’ll work out this year for the American League because there are a bunch of teams very close in the standings. But if the National League wraps up the way it is today, the Braves would have to play the Cardinals in a one-game play-in for the right to continue in the postseason even though over the course of a 162-game season the Braves have been seven games better than the Cardinals. Screw the Braves and everything, but that’s just ridiculous. The point of making the season so long is to allow the very good teams to distinguish themselves from the just kind of decent ones. One game should never be given so much impact in baseball.
Well, I don’t go that much in for awards not being given to me. But I’d say one possibly useful award would be one for the best setup man. And it’d only be useful if it became so sought after and so well-compensated that great relievers actually wanted to be setup men so they could win it. Anything that opened up good relievers to pitching middle innings would be cool, I think.
Alternately, I’d say a Platinum Glove Award for the single best defensive player in each league. But if that were chosen the way the Gold Glove Awards are, it’d hardly be a reliable standard of defensive excellence. Still, it’d be fun — in some grotesque way — to stomach the annual columns about why some very tall first baseman should win the award, and then the inevitable Internet backlash.
Finally, the Jeff Francoeur Award for a guy who we really want to honor in some way but can’t come up with any other excuse to do so.
https://twitter.com/JGPace/status/251689994568204288
Quite the contrary, I actually imagine we see a few more very good, long-term single-team players in the coming years. With smaller market teams enjoying more revenue and big free-agent contracts frequently fizzling, the trend appears to be toward teams locking up their young players to longterm extensions that buy out their arbitration years and the first few years of their free agency.
To name a few, Joey Votto, Joe Mauer, Ryan Braun and Troy Tulowitzki all have contracts that should take them until at least very deep in their careers with the teams that drafted them.
Also via email, real-life friend Bill passes along this link and asks, “Who should be the new president in the Nats’ race?”
Bill: I am a stalwart of the Stalwarts. It’s Chester A. Arthur or GTFO.
Lots of Dickey love:
On iTunes here, as usual.
Hey, you know who has had a nice season? R.A. Dickey.
Dickey looked atypically hittable in the early innings of the Mets’ 6-3 win over the Pirates on Thursday, then characteristically dominant late. By the top of the 8th — when Dickey came out despite 111 pitches already on his ledger — the Pirates appeared overmatched, just sort of haplessly waving at knuckleballs. If you missed it: Same thing you’ve seen all year.
With two outs and behind in the count, Travis Snider managed to foul off a few knuckleballs, then lay off a few more to draw a walk. Terry Collins pulled Dickey after his 128th pitch put Snider on first base, and the knuckleballer walked off the field to a standing ovation.
One too-exciting ninth inning later, Dickey was officially the Mets’ first 20-game winner since Frank Viola did it in 1990. Pitcher wins, you know — whatever. There are better ways to show how awesome Dickey has been this season, for sure. The 222 strikeouts and 2.69 ERA over 227 2/3 innings are nice places to start. But if celebrating this particular milestone means celebrating Dickey’s 2012, so be it. Plus, it’s not exactly as if he’s benefited from the 1927 Yankees’ offense.
Tedquarters 