Wednesday, January 16, 2013.
What Ever Happened To The Open-Face Roast Beef Sandwich?
After the radio show (done from home, because it's still cold and misty, and I've had my fill of driving through it), Mary Ann and I went to Mandina's in Mandeville, which we haven't for awhile. I had a hunger for Mandinafood, but for nothing in particular. My standard order is trout amandine with its thick meuniere sauce, but I thought I ought to try some other things.
My eyes alighted on a line I have not seen in a long time: "Open-Face Roast Beef." It figures that Mandina's--a throwback in many ways, which is what people like about it--would serve such a thing. When I first started going to restaurants, in my mid-teens, this was something you could get in almost any restaurant in town. Even in some fancy restaurants.
Sometimes it was listed as "open-face roast beef sandwich." John Gagliano--a guy I used to work with at the Time Saver in the 1960s--used to make noise about this. "How can you have an open-face roast beef sammidge?" he asked, whenever we were confronted by the possibility. "It's not a sammidge. You can't eat it like a sammidge. You have to use a fork."
He was right about that. An open-face roast beef consists of two slices of toast on a plate, covered with the same roast beef used to make a roast beef poor boy, complete with a goodly amount of gravy. If it came with lettuce and tomatoes, they were on the side, as a salad.
Thinking about this now, I wonder why anyone would order such a thing. But a lot of people must have done so, because open-face was everywhere in those days. I ordered it for old times' sake. It must be forty years since the last time I ate it.
If I am lucky in two different ways, it will be another forty years before my next sampling. Here's what's wrong. Although we all love a good roast beef poor boy (and Mandina's has always made fine versions of that classic), the magical flavor comes not from the roast beef or the bread. It's the combination of gravy, mayonnaise, and pickles--all of which are absent in an open-face.
Fortunately, I had a few other things to eat in my order. First, a cup of mock turtle soup, a Mandina's specialty. One of the side-dish options other than fries for the open-face was spaghetti and red sauce. That was a meal in itself.
Mary Ann, however, hit the jackpot. I have been laboring under the illusion that Mandina's grilled pork chop was from the same era as the open-face: thin, overcooked, tough. In fact, it is a beautiful double-thick (but single-bone) chop, seared nicely on the outside, and still blushing and juicy inside. It was a shade too rare for MA, but I thought it was perfectly cooked. I will have one of these with some red beans next time we fetch up here.
I finished up with a square of bread pudding topped with caramel ice cream. I should not have eaten all of that.
Mandina's. Mandeville: 4240 La 22. 985-674-9883.
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