You come on
sentimental
If the solar car's
coming
I'm home
The Magna Carta's on a Slim Jim blood
brutha
The sunk soul with the coal clean toe
is the mutha
Another Tuesday, another Taste.
This week's review is one several months in the making, believe it or not. I started writing this one in freaking March... but realized this first draft was giving a very incomplete picture of this particular place. As such, I knew exactly what had to be done to do this properly. The first half of the review sat on the shelf until early November, with my plan to at last finish it on a Monday flight to California. Ummm... yeah...
The endless bullsh*t of the past several weeks aside... we're finally doing this, a place that somehow took me half a year to finish writing about. It's Cherry Street Bar-B-Que. Located on... I think you can guess which street!
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Despite its primary location in a very developmentally barren (though that is changing) part of Toronto, Cherry Street Bar-B-Que has been a big hit pretty much since opening their doors in the summer of 2016. Within half a decade, Cherry BBQ grew out into residency stands in food halls, a permanent kiosk in Scotiabank Arena (even with my discount I ain't paying those prices), and various other pop-ups. Oh, and a little Michelin Bib Gourmand feature.
Owner/pit-master Lawrence La Pianta grew up in Toronto and long held serious passion for all things barbeque, first working at it as a backyard hobby with friends (cooking a whole pig, Lechon, to be precise). His career in film/television required long trips all over North America... giving an opportunity to explore legendary BBQ joints and learn tricks of the BBQ trade from some of the very best pitmasters in the land. Most notable to him was taking lessons at the 17th Street BBQ in Murphysboro, Illinois.
The leap into actually running a restaurant came about when he helped out a restaurateur friend with a "once a week" barbeque menu (they didn't have anything for Saturdays, according to La Pianta). This later grew into a twice a week, etc... until eventually seventy percent of their full menu was just BBQ. He left this kitchen life after a year to return into the film industry but naturally, the passion and idea to finally open a full time barbeque restaurant of his own was there.
Knowing the Portlands area well from his time in film (that's where almost all of the production studios are here in Toronto) in an old abandoned bank he found his ideal spacious spot at (now Old?) Cherry Street and Commissioners Road.
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I've been to Cherry Street Bar-B-Que a few times over their eight year run, though quite infrequently despite having passed by it at least two thousand times (actual estimate).
The first time in 2018 I took a close friend (and occasional Pizza Quest Associate) out for her birthday and we sat on their excellent patio: flat and spacious, mostly picnic tables at the time, and beyond the bees hassling us (one of the few things I like about Winter is their absence) it was a tremendous time. Considering how open and unobstructed (for now) most of the Portlands are, you get a seriously good view of the lake and the Toronto skyline from their sidewalk level patio, which faces west.
There was another time a few years later I went to Cherry Street Bar-B-Que with some softball friends but that story sucks because I dropped all of my takeout food-I-mean-itneverhappenedwasneverthere! Nope.
Now, watch me as I clumsily attempt to recreate my experience of going to a place several months ago. Ummm.... uh... it was night time! Yeah that's it. And... kinda cold early spring weather. Yes I'm doing good! Nailing this. Hmmm... I wanna say I was... hungry? Probably? Oh oh! They were open. Now that's an important part of this tale...
Well... at least I wrote down my thoughts at the time about what I ordered. Here they are: take it away, March WCStreet!
(December editor's side note: this was a special I don't believe they offer anymore)
So here is the pastrami cheesesteak plate: pastrami and queso with peppers (no onions please) on a herb potato bun, served with fries and slaw on the side. As far as fries go, these ones are fairly ordinary. Decent crispiness, nicely seasoned with salt, even texture throughout... perfectly serviceable. There are far better fries and far worse. They do fine.
The slaw is more on the sweeter, slightly vinegary side, with some nice subtle tang at the end. I usually prefer creamier coleslaws but this one here is extremely nice: I'd be tempted to buy sides of this for my own sandwiches at home.
Onto the sandwich! I gotta say, this is the strangest pastrami sandwich I myself have ever come across. When you imagine a pastrami sandwich, a classic simple image appears: a thick stack of that salty sliced dark red meat, probably a squirt of table mustard, all stuffed between two slices of a soft rye bread.
This Cherry BBQ offering is clearly not that. A circular bun, no mustard in sight, a drenching of cheese sauce and strangest of all: the pastrami is shredded. So bizarre... like a classic got transmogrified in a teleportation accident..
Definitely not what I expected (the special called it a pastrami "plate" and so I thought all the ingredients would be separate) but the clue is in the second word: 'cheesesteak'. Essentially, this is their take on a classic Philly Cheesesteak sandwich, only with pastrami instead of standard beef steak and a round bun instead of a sub/rectangular one.
It's a very weird experiment and the flavour is interesting, although it doesn't completely work. Again, I omitted the onions (a move on par with dissing their sports teams that's sure to get me run out of town in Philadelphia). I kept the peppers though... but they are hardly in here at all. It's possible they are minced into the pastrami itself, but this sandwich really could've used some kind of bright crunch or sweetness that sliced peppers can provide.
As is, as far as fillings for a sandwich go this is kind of an awkward one. It's aggressively cheesy and the cheese itself is like a thick sticky sauce (a taste similar to processed American cheese, Velveeta I've seen suggested) that absorbs the flavour and texture of all it touches. On occasion the salty red meat of the pastrami breaks through, and those bites are quite delicious... but about half the time you're eating a quality but soft bun slathered in gooey processed cheese with hints of shredded meat throughout.
Just a strange concoction, and I wouldn't really recommend it. Scrap the bun: if the inside of this sandwich were utilized as say, a topping for french fries? Now you've got something really good. The crispness of those fries would be perfect to cut through the sheer thickness of this cheese/shredded pastrami blanket... rather than the endless thick bites of heavy bun and cheese. Seems a shame I went to such a renowned BBQ restaurant and ordered the most bizarre, out of character item available. Wish I could go back in time and try this over again.
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How about forward in time? Cliffhanger! Tune in next time, on... Contrived Reasons To Drag Out A Review. Er, I mean The Tuesday Taste.
Tuesday Tune
I don't feel like writing a description. There's something kind of punk rock about it and is a wicked song.
We'll be back. Hold onto your butts.
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