Rethinking the sandwich

I could smell Meat Cheese Bread before I saw the place.

Walking up Southeast 14th, the closer I got to my destination, the stronger the maddeningly enticing scent of a smoky grill grew in my nostrils. Rounding the corner of Stark, the little black tripod grill was easier to spot than the restaurant’s tiny sign above the door, making the grill appear more as creative advertising than functional cooking device.

But the grill outside, silently transmitting the shop’s best advertisement on the breeze, is a good allegory for Meat Cheese Bread itself: simple name, complex result.

The menu, aside from a few nods to vegetarians, sticks pretty much to the formula the place is named for, with sandwiches containing meat, cheese and bread with vegetables and sauce as a bonus. But unlike the standard deli sandwich fare of flaccid slices of turkey breast or overly salty ham, Meat Cheese Bread transforms the ingredients they work with into both playful and comforting meals.

The “Smoky Chicken” sandwich, for example, is a chicken salad spiced and smoked into a creamy salmon-colored mixture, sweetened slightly with avocado and caramelized onions sandwiched between two slices of a fresh rustic white bread. On the tongue, it comes off as both familiar and exotic, a sandwich I’ve had dozens of times in my life and yet completely different.

Likewise, the “Park Kitchen” is a play on the classic steak sandwich. The flank steak was perfectly tender and savory, playing counterpoint to the tang of pickled onions, blue cheese aoli and light vinaigrette. The end result is a fascinating mix of sharp and soft flavors. Other sandwich creations like the B.L.B. (bacon, lettuce and roasted beets) or the roasted mushroom with goat cheese, frisee and sherry onions also play with classic sandwich pairings and mix them up with ingredients that usually get overlooked by the sandwich-making world.

Not just limited to lunch or dinner fare, Meat Cheese Bread also offers breakfast choices to grab on the way to campus. Morning-fuel like the steak and egg with blue cheese or the breakfast burrito are reasonably priced with the exception of toast, which they will make for you for the price of $2, should you find yourself in need of hot, crunchy and expensive bread.

Unlike its sandwich-shop neighbor to the South (Bunk) Meat Cheese Bread is definitely an eat-in spot. Lacking the cheerful, fast-paced bustle of Bunk, Meat Cheese Bread’s airy and open dining room invites you to stick around and enjoy your meal at a more leisurely pace. This may have something to do with how their food is structured. Some of the sandwiches, such as the ones sampled on my visit, would not hold up well on a commute. By the time I had finished half of the chicken salad sandwich, the other half was already soaking up the sauce into the bread. Eating your lunch on-site is recommended.

Fortunately, the friendly guys behind the counter and the interesting artwork for sale on the walls make eating in at MCB entirely doable. The shop comes off as very neighborhood oriented. On the quiet early evening my fellow sandwich-adventurer and I stopped in, customers drifted in and out of the shop, discussing sandwiches and bits of their lives with the guy at the counter, and in general ambling along at a pace that Meat Cheese Bread inspires.