Lime and limpid green
a second scene
A fight between the blue
you once knew
Floating down, the sound resounds
around the icy waters
underground
Another Tuesday... another Taste! Yes! We're back for another run of food trying fun. The whole 'July Taco Month' concept didn't progress as smoothly as hoped... although I did get to eat quite a few tacos so... obviously an overall success.
Regardless! There will be a few more taco reviews in the future (two places in particular) but lets get back to reviewing other things. Like sandwiches? Blimey! Where on Earth would I find a place that offers such a rare, niche item? Hmmmm... wait, I've got it! How about a place... that has 'Sandwich' literally (actually literally) in their name. Brilliant! Yeah, you've wasted a minute of your life reading my silly buildup here but if it makes you feel any better... I wasted five minutes of mine writing it.
How about some substance of the backstory variety. Leslie's Sandwich Room (located in Leslieville, they offer sandwiches and it is indeed a room) opened up just off the corner of Queen Street East and Heward, a block southeast of Carlaw Avenue. The address is 969 Queen Street East, a large red brick building on a south-east corner with a varied history of tenants in that ground-level spot. Before a sandwich room, there was a samosa place apparently very eager to announce they were coming soon (unfortunately this was 2020-21, an era not fertile for optimism).
Checking old Google Map street photos (seriously recommend this, some go back almost two decades and it's a trip)... before the doomed samosas 969 Queen East appeared to have been a longtime shop for toddler/baby accessories. Maybe this might be yawn-inducing to some readers and I apologize somewhat, but personally my memory is really wonky (I'll remember a pizza from 2018 but forget my co-workers names several times). I love the kind of stuff where you remember what once was previously in an exact location... can you blame me? I went to high school near Yonge and Bloor here in Toronto and that intersection in its current form makes me feel like my parachute just accidentally landed in a totally different city.
Back on topic. The owners of Leslie's Sandwich Room appear to have all worked together for quite some time (Toronto Life gets into slightly more detail about it, slightly) and I have to say the idea of one of the owners of a restaurant actually living upstairs, coming down occasionally to raid the cookie stash... truly and absolutely delightful.
How about me? Obviously I don't tell enough of my stories on here, obviously. Fine twist my arm... well Leslie's Sandwich Room first came to my attention on Reddit (possibly a comment on my Lambo's review) and I was immediately intrigued as I'd never even heard of this sandwich, in Leslie's room-I mean Leslieville!
Naturally, it took me many months to get around to it because... I'm good at this I swear. But! An old wonderful friend of mine happened to be house-sitting in the Carlaw/Queen area and often works from home anyhow... lets do lunch! So we did, on an on/off drizzly Tuesday, head on inside.
Stealth bad angle photo! Ugh damnit.
Apparently there was some turbulence when I shot this. Hopefully, it still conveys how the inside of Leslie's Sandwich Room really has a cafe feel. I think it's the specific kind of lighting and the glass display at the counter where you order.
That glass display indeed is where the main attractions, the sandwiches, are... pre-made rather than constructed to order... which gave me an uneasy first impression. It's the pizza slice rule: oftentimes you pick the freshest looking one rather than the one you really want. With pizza slices you can see disgusting dryness immediately... but sandwiches? Much trickier. I had to hold my discretion tight and stick with my plan.
My dear friendo got the La Morta sandwich (mortadella) with a side of their in-house salt/pepper and vinegar kettle chips. In my mind I think I'd confused Leslie's with another place and had just assumed the 'chip' side of the combo was a bag of Miss Vickies... and so didn't order a combo for myself. Whoops. Hey I've never claimed to be an expert at this food reviewing stuff... merely diligent.
Anyhow, I went in pretty confident I would get their La Boeuf sandwich... which is what I did.
According to le menu: roast beef, sharp (white) cheddar, crispy shallots, a horseradish rose marie sauce, on a focaccia bun.
According to this reviewer: uh yeah this is a really impressive sandwich. It's extremely compact and loaded with all of those delightful ingredients mentioned above. Sneakily filling as well: neither my friend or I had eaten all day going in (this was about 2:30 in the afternoon) and both of us left the second half of our respective sandwiches aside for a midnight snack.
Seeing as the sandwich is essentially named "beef", lets start with that. Texture and flavour-wise, this reminds of ordering a nice prime rib roast from a steakhouse. Not quite as bloody/oozing juices as that might be, but this is probably on the lower side of 'Medium' on the scale. It has that consistency.
And... it's quite delicious: tender, chewy at points but in a good savory way, and the roast beef flavour is simply all roast and beef (avoiding that somewhat oniony taste you often get with deli sliced roast beef). You can tell they roast this in house: ditch the bread and eat this beef with just some mashed potatoes and a dollop of horseradish... still amazing. For a cut of beef that isn't particularly fatty either, this has a wonderfully accessible texture that lingers just long enough to avoid becoming gummy and tasteless in the mouth. Really well done.
The supporting elements do wonders as well. The white cheddar is the dry, thin crumbling kind... extremely sharp on the initial taste, a perfect compliment to a juicy beef cut sandwich.
As for the horseradish rose marie... well going in I didn't know what a rose marie sauce was. However when eating this sandwich, I felt like this spread was like a secret sauce you'd find on a classic American cheeseburger... with a sweet pickled taste to the mayo (like a Thousand Islands dressing). Well... wouldn't you know a 'Rose Marie' sauce is a sister sauce to a Thousand Islands, the difference being the type of pepper used. Honestly, I thought I was way out to left field with that interpretation until I looked it up.
I confess, I was hoping for more of a horseradishy (it's a word now damnit), nasal clearer with the sauce... instead this does taste more like a mayo-meets-ketchup-meets-relish. It still works, adding some cream and sweetness to what would otherwise be a fairly dry sandwich. A little unique horseradish kick, even in a minor mayo dose, would've been marvelous though.
Lets wrap things up by talking about the bread and the chips briefly. I'd also mention the crispy shallots, but my thoughts on putting tiny crispy things in warm sandwiches have been driven beneath the subway far too many times... and so here I go saying it again: it never works as well as intended because you lose the key crispiness element within the enclosed residual warmth of the sandwich. It happens here, at Leslie's, too.
That focaccia bread though... yowza. I'm used to exceptional-level focaccia having some garlic or olive oil or some flavour element baked into it, simply to enhance the sheer awesomeness that already exists.
Here? Good enough for a solo career. Unbelievably soft, fresh, squeezeable yet firm (insert joke here)... just fabulous. No harsh edges despite the circular sandwich shape (or the reheat), nothing close to harsh crustiness (not even as a midnight snack)... just consistently pillowy throughout. According to the Toronto Life article I linked above, they bake their bread with a touch of honey just to give a tiny hint of sweetness. Gotta say I missed that but regardless... this is beyond exceptional as far as buns go. Incredible stuff.
And the kettle chips! I mean, unless they're overly stale it's hard to mess up a kettle potato chip. These ones nail the crunchiness, and get just enough of the salt/pepper and vinegar hint so as to not overwhelm the taste of the chip.
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Overall! The prices are hefty indeed (really the only weakness I could find) but then when you see the high quality and considerable care that go into these (also hefty) sandwiches... you're definitely getting something great for what you're paying for.
Definitely a highly recommended from me, and my friend (her La Morta also looked positively delicious). Like a few other Leslieville restaurants/cafes they are strictly a lunch spot, closing at 6pm most days, so this isn't the kind of thing you're hitting up after a few drinks at the bar (as perfect as a fantastic giant sandwich would be in that situation). Regardless, they are seriously worth a visit (I'm tempted to go back for the tuna tartare sandwich myself). Spend an afternoon in Leslieville (which is fun of its own accord) and check this out.
Tuesday Tune
While it isn't their first ever song (I'm guessing Arnold Layne/See Emily Play came out before as a single) this is the very first track on their very first album, and it holds up as both a wicked tune of its era and the beginning of a wild musical journey that this band would go on. Flicker flicker flicker bam, pow.
That's all for this week! There are some pizza reviews forthcoming so keep an eye out for those, but until then... stay safe, stay cool, eat some good food and don't spill that mustard.
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