You say you've lost your faith
but that's not where it's at
You had no faith to lose
and you know it
I know the reason
That you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd
you're in with
Hey another Tuesday... another Taste. After the truly "delightful" experience of reviewing Subway a couple of weeks back, the idea of how to best wash out that particular grotesque sub sandwich from my memory has lingered since, like an unwelcome house guest. Well... it just so happens that local mini-chain Belly Buster recently opened their fourth location on College Street, a perfectly timed reason to finally feature them on the Tuesday review.
Despite this recent expansion (their Queen Street East outpost has also opened just in the past year, while the King West spot is about a decade old), the original Belly Buster Submarines has existed up north of Yonge and Lawrence for nearly fifty years now and continues to go on strong.
I'd only been to a Belly Buster once before, which was the King Street location for a quick lunch with some co-workers during my days of working TIFF screenings at Roy Thomson Hall. It was honestly a while (and multiple jobs and also that global pandemic thing) ago, so I don't really remember what I ordered or whether it totally agreed with fickle ol' me. In many ways this 2022 visit was like trying Belly Buster for the first time all over again.
I went to the Queen East location (because I live in the east end, so duh) and went for a standard turkey sub sandwich: whole wheat bread with lettuce, green peppers, cucumbers, spicy honey mustard, mayo and sub sauce. As I mention anytime I get a burger, I'm pretty simple with this stuff. The temptation to add pickles was there also, but seemed redundant with cucumbers present already... plus aside from hamburgers or fried chicken sandwiches, I find pickles aren't really a "must have" topping for me. This is surely true sacrilege to many people I know who simply adore pickles (we're talking pickles on pizza stuff here) but my enjoyment of them leans much more into mild territory. I've never even once purchased them from a grocery store, seriously.
Diving into the pickle-less submarine sandwich you see above... well there isn't a whole lot to dive specifically into detail about. This is pretty much a very straight forward turkey sandwich, with a plentiful amount of turkey I was pleased to see. To compare it against some of the other sub sandwiches I've previously reviewed for the TT... this one probably is the best. Subway was of course beyond dreadful, Mr. Sub (despite my nostalgia for them) is very very average and the closest Quizno's to downtown Toronto is now at Browns Line.
I would put Belly Buster ahead of Quizno's anyhow, and this is coming from somebody who was truly a big Quizno's fan. They're very different sandwiches and while I do love Quizno's flavourful sauces and general toastyness... those strong elements do expertly disguise some pretty flat ingredients sometimes, or a notable lack of contents within the sub. Those ingredients and contents are still far, far superior to Subway, which I'll say again barely resembles actual food.
What works here is Belly Buster is a much more well-rounded sub sandwich. The whole wheat bread, while not mind blowing, really has superior depth and softness to that unfortunate Subway sub I reviewed (perhaps the most simultaneously hollow and stale bun I've encountered for these reviews). Buster's bun brings a good mix of firmness to contain the contents and also enough softness/freshness to make the texture enjoyable as well. A perfectly acceptable bread vessel. I've possibly never mentioned this but I've really become a bread snob as I've aged into my 30s. When buying bread for my own uses at home, it has to be baked in store regardless of the style, though especially with buns. I abandoned any of the mass-packaged Wonder/Dempster/D'Italiano stuff many years ago, and the difference in taste and freshness with baked in-store products (especially when toasted) can't be properly explained beyond "I ain't ever going back".
This sub you see here was not, in fact, toasted... yet it didn't really need to be. Cold turkey is itself still extremely enjoyable when the flavour is genuine, and this one brings enough of that to work. You get the tender flakiness, a hint of saltiness and plus eating this whole thing made me want to take a pleasant nap almost immediately afterwards... which is probably a good sign of its quality? Certainly better than after the "chicken" in that Subway sandwich, which made me want to curl into a ball on the curb of a busy public street. Anyhow, for a cold cut the turkey here was tasty and plentiful.
The supporting elements do a solid job as well. The green peppers (despite being oddly diced into tiny cubes) have some good crunch to them, as do the cucumbers (thankfully with some moisture to them as well). The shredded lettuce is reasonably fresh (at least to the point it doesn't soggily stick to itself) and the cheddar cheese is a notable secondary presence despite the turkey slices outnumbering it possibly 5-to-1. I suppose the sauces are the weak link: the spicy honey mustard was nicely sweet but I would've liked a bit more punch to it, while the mayo is your standard mayo and the vinegar/pepperyness of the sub sauce helps the turkey but provides little else. Belly Buster offer quite a few BBQ sauces and while curious to try them, a turkey sandwich to me didn't quite seem an ideal match for such a tasting.
Overall! It's been a while since I whole-heartedly recommended something here on the Tuesday review, but this was a damn fine (and affordable) sub sandwich that filled my stomach and sent me to slumberland. This was really quite good... nothing life-changing (unlike the pizza place a few doors east of their Queen location) but Belly Buster get the basics right and the result is a quality submarine sandwich. I will likely go back and try something more adventurous in the future, although in the meantime I really have to try Good Behavior first (now with a spot on Gerrard East) if another sub craving should strike.
Burnt Ends -- With the weather here in Toronto finally taking its unfortunate turn into the chilly early months of proto-Winter, my desire/tolerance towards cross-city food adventures will wane a bit. This does not mean any kind of hiatus from the TT! At least, perhaps not yet... there are plenty of ideas I've been saving that also require minimally tedious stomping through snow.
This does mean however that I might switch gears and focus back on more creative writing projects (which I've been sorely neglecting), or writing more about music/band discographies again. I still haven't covered a Canadian artist or band yet, and I've got an excellent idea who the first will be...
Oh, and if you missed it: last week I checked out Panago Pizza. It's... at least a pizza.
Another Pie Bites The Dust -- While not an elite Toronto pizza in my books (probably the fringes of the Top 50 now), still very sad news about Lambretta Pizza on Roncesvalles and their unfortunate tango with financial losses thanks to the pandemic and a hardline landlord. They still have a new-ish location on Davenport I believe, so this hopefully isn't completely the end.
Tuesday Tune -- I woke up Tuesday morning with this song in my head, and it's enough of a classic that no further explanation is really needed.
That's all for this week! Hopefully, if the world survives (fingers crossed) we'll be back with another review next Tuesday. Until that time, stay safe, stay warm (stupid approaching Winter) and don't spill that mustard.
No comments:
Post a Comment