Blue Line Sandwich Company turned up on Metairie Road’s restaurant row a few years back and was the talk of the neighborhood. Brad McGehee, former chef at Ye Olde College Inn, was looking to elevate breakfast in the neighborhood. Here you will find duck and sweet potato hash, fresh squeezed orange and grapefruit juices, and homemade cookies.
You’re probably not going to see something like the duck-duck-goose waffle anywhere else. It’s a Belgian waffle, confit of local duck, topped with foie gras butter over sweet potato hash. Two sunny eggs round out this dish with powdered sugar and a cane syrup drizzle.
There’s also a cochon de lait biscuit of slow-cooked pork and grilled tomatoes, smothered in red-eye gravy and served open face with two fried eggs. Or a breakfast burrito that includes Cotija cheese with optional sriracha crema.
For us, it’s all about the corned beef hash. It took awhile to warm to the idea, but now it’s on the plate whenever we see it. Here the corned beef hash includes Hatch chiles, a chile that is harvested August through the end of September in Hatch, New Mexico, a town so tiny you drive through it on the back roads in two minutes. Hatch chiles can be ready in mid-July, depending on weather, but they are served here in this dish year round. This plate includes a large biscuit which appears to be a hybrid of the drop biscuit and cut biscuit universe.Atop this pile of chiles, onions, peppers, potatoes, and cubed corned beef, sit two fried eggs. It is an enormous pile of food. In the beginning this dish didn’t seem to have what we call hash brown imposters (cubes of fried potatoes) but maybe that's just our imagination. Everyone, it seems, calls these cubes hash browns now. Corned beef hash though, is all about the corned beef, which to us means more shredded corned beef. These large cubes of otherwise fine corned beef are just too large.The Hatch chiles make a spicy statement, but not too much. The onions and peppers offer a caramelized sweetness that rounds out the dish nicely.
These fried potato cubes are also the basis of the sweet potato hash with duck. This was an interesting dish and quite good, incorporating onions and red peppers in the mix. Comes in a smallish bowl for $8 as a side, but it is enough. The pulled duck is incorporated well throughout the bowl and is generous..
A side we didn’t like so well was the cheddar cheese grits. This dish is near to my heart because I grew up eating it. My mother stirred eggs into cheese and grits, so my grits were always yellow. Even with this strong fond memory, the grits here left me cold. Too runny, and covered with a blanket of yellow cheese, they had a very mild hint of sweet, which was odd. I thought maybe it was a lingering taste from the sweet potatoes in the duck hash, but even after a few bites of eggs and biscuit, the grits still seemed sweet.
The pancakes had an appropriate sweetness, and were dusted with powdered sugar. These come with a scattering of berries and present a pretty and appetizing picture, flanked with real maple syrup on the side. The breakfast meat, in this case sausage, were two larger pork sausages with a not-too-heavy flavor of sage. A nice sear on the outside made the skin perfectly crisp.
Rounding out the menu are the basic two eggs any style, a power plate for the health people, standard omelet varieties, and hip breakfast sandwiches. A small lunch menu of interesting soups, salads, and sandwiches is available until 2pm. All this is served in a diner atmosphere, but only the kind you might find on Metairie Road. Brad McGehee hit all the right notes here; an upscale breakfast option for an upscale neighborhood. Pick up one of their signature homemade macadamia nut, chocolate, and coconut cookies on the way out.
Blue Line Sandwich Co.
2023 Metairie Road Metairie 70005
504-309-3773
Daily 7am-2pm
bluelinesandwichco.com
