"Hero or roll? Hero or roll??!" The deli man's clarion call pulls you back from an LED-lit trance. You put down your smartphone and blink helplessly at slices of Boar's Head Ovengold® Roasted Turkey Breast. Behind you, a line of faceless humanity sighs with impatience and somewhere a band is playing. Your sandwich order isn't ready yet—it hasn't even begun. "Hero or roll??!!" Does it have to be this way? It doesn't have to be this way.
The ubiquitous and eternal presence of a made-to-order deli sandwich in New York is, at first glance, a godsend. But not all roast beefs are created equal, and the newly-opened sandwich shop from Brooklyn's The Meat Hook is working hard to save us from a forever routine of rote rolls. Narrowly nestled beside Gimme Coffee on Lorimer Street in Williamsburg, the plainly-named Meat Hook Sandwich pairs the butchery's excellent beef, pork, chicken, and lamb with delectable toppings and fresh breads from Bakery Boys and Sullivan Street bakeries.
Sandwich prices range from $11-13, but the meal is easily twice the size of the average deli sandwich order and miles ahead in terms of taste. Our roast pork order manifested itself as a massive sesame bun filled with delicious, thinly-sliced meat, an anchovy-tuna-caper tonatto sauce, and spicy raisins sourced from Ecuador. The rich, smoky, spicy meal pairs well with a Modelo and Pacifico ($5 each) that Meat Hook Sandwich has made available.
Even more creative is the lamb gyro sausage, which comes topped with fresh tomato, crumbles of fried garlic, red onion, and a few mint leaves. It would have been enough for the shop to turn out no-frills sandwiches that overemphasize its grass-fed and expertly-prepared meat, but that's not the case. Bread, veggies, sauce, and animal work in harmony to elevate each other to their fullest potential, even if the owners's vision skews much simpler.
"We mainly just kind of set out to make sandwiches that were everything you had had as a kid. We weren't trying to re-invent the wheel," Ben Turley told us during our visit. Turley, who is a partner and co-owner of the 2-week-old shop, said that a lot of work went into striking a balance between creativity and familiarity. That balance is evidenced in the roast beef, which gets served with a layer of crispy hash browns. "We talked about things like our love of putting potato chips on our roast beef sandwiches," Turley said. "It's a crispy potato layer that you never see coming."
Apart from offering Meat Hook fare in a readymade lunch format, the shop is also on a mission to highlight some of butchery's less-popular cuts. A finely-tuned special of crispy pig face with chipotle mayo, cilantro, jalapeño, and lime is a favorite of the staff. "We've always been very proud that we make it and we think it's amazing," Turley said, beaming with pride. "People need to be eating this. It's incredible."
The narrow, industrial-themed shop is limited to lunch hours of 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. for the time being and can seat about fifteen sandwich seekers.
495 Lorimer Street; the-meathook.com
