more from on the road

As my stomach started to grumble while out snowshoeing, the knowledge of the exsisting left-over half piece of steak back at the cabin gave me the extra endurance to finish the hike and I crossed my fingers Aw wouldn't want it for his lunch.

The thing that gives this basic left-over meat sandwich it's edge is the greens. Fresh chinese broccoli from a farmer's market in Oakland added a mild bitter flavor cut with a hint of sweetness.

The proportions of flavors in total were well balanced, mild cheddar cheese, grilled steak, fresh tomato, red onion, chinese broccoli, brown mustard and mayo all on sliced wheat. Each ingredient could be identified as well as subtly complimenting the others.

korean steak sandwich

rhea's deli, 19th & valencia, san francisco

This was my second go-round with Rhea's Korean Steak Sandwich- the documentation of my first was lost when I stupidly lost my nice digital camera on Halloween.  Losing my camera, however, gave me a great excuse to get another one of these sandwiches, though!  The steak is marinated in honey, soy sauce and spices, and has an incredibly soft and moist texture.  The menu claims that the sandwich comes with the cheese of your choice, but the guy making the sandwiches didn't inquire and we ended up with cheddar.  That's fine by me, but I could see maybe a jack cheese being good with this too.  This sandwich also supposedly comes with THREE kinds of onions: grilled onions, pickled onions, and fresh onions!  It was kind of hard to verify the validity of that claim, but I'd believe it.  When presented with the option, we asked for the sandwich spicy, and it was fairly hot- just not burn-your-mouth, chug-your-drink hot.  I think that the hotness (hot sauce + picked jalapeños) was a perfect match for the sweetness of the meat.  This sandwich is definitely a great choice if you like sweet and spicy.

fred's steak sandwich

This lovely little number here is something I ate a couple of months back at my parents' house (yeah, I got a little bit of a backlog going on right now). The meat is leftover steak from the previous night's dinner, a celebration of my little brother's graduation from high school. On special occasions, my family likes to cook "Fred's Steak", which is a blackened and marinated steak sold at Schaub's Market at the Stanford Shopping Center. Probably my favorite meal in the whole world is barbecued Fred's Steak and my mom's homemade potato salad, eaten outside on a warm night. But! That is not a sandwich. And so, thanks to the remarkable self-control of everyone in my family, allowing there to be any leftover steak at all, I was able to throw together a steak sandwich the next day. As far as I can tell, the primary flavor in Fred's Steak is "salty". I'm sure there's more to it than that, but I couldn't tell you what. Just that it tastes salty, and really, really good. And the leftovers are just as good as when it is freshly grilled. I do like cold steak very much; although I lack the technical know-how to properly understand it, I guess the fat coagulates, and the meat becomes firm and somehow easier to bite through. I didn't add too much to this sandwhich, so as not to distract from the meat, but the sourdough bread was quite good, the muenster cheese was not overly flavorful, the dijon mustard added a little spice and the mayonnaise added a little sweetness. It was a tasty sandwich- but (between you and me)- if it weren't for the sake of the sandwich blog, I would've just eaten the leftover steak plain.