Dakota Meat Market and Deli

Driving home from Menards, we got stuck at a red light. I looked up the (pedestrian) alley and noticed grotesques. I said to The Laird, “that building down there has gargoyles on the roof. Oh wait, they’re grotesques; they’re not attached to the downspouts. It looks like a British pub.” The light turned green and we started moving as I continued, “we should try their fish and chips. Hey, do you want to stop for lunch? We need to eat somewhere.”

By then, we were two blocks away. The Laird agreed and turned. There was almost no one parked on the street. “Just park here, we can walk back,” I advised. He did. We did.

The pub is The Wobbly Bobby. It did not open until 1500. As I write this, it’s still not 1500, yet. The shop between the pub and the street is the Dakota Meat Market and Deli. I suggested we eat there. We did.

They are not related to Dakota Butcher. After clearing that up, the owner (I assume; I didn’t ask) was happy to fill us in on his sourcing. Almost everything comes from just a couple of farms, the owners of which he has had a long relationship with. We did not check out the meat market part of the shop.

I have several test-this-place dishes. For sandwiches, it’s a French Dip, which they had. The Laird ordered a hamburger – well on its way to becoming known as the best in town, according to the owner.

While they cooked our order up, I remembered that I have an “Every Eatery” blog category that is woefully out of date. I scurried outside to take a picture. Coming back in, I noticed that they do the sane, but incredibly unusual, thing to their double-doors: They unlock both sides! I congratulated the owner on that. It’s one of my pet peeves, in case you can’t tell.

My standard for a French Dip sandwich is Southern Hospitality. A now defunct restaurant that David and I used to frequent for lunch, back in the olden days when we went into the Denver office. I can’t describe how good it was. I don’t know the right foody words. First off, it was smoked prime rib. It’s pretty hard to go wrong with that as a base. The buns were toasted sourdough, which I’d bet were baked on-site, if not made from scratch. The on-the-side horseradish was a very horsey mayonnaise, more like creamy horseradish than horsey mayo. The au jus tasted as if it were actually the roast drippings, although I’d bet it was at least rehydrated, if not a mix.

Although good, today’s was not up to that standard – but nothing has been in over ten years and it’s my regular new-place sandwich order. It was a upper mid-tier sandwich. The bread was good. Not a bland Sysco bun, but nothing special, either. It had onions, which were nicely sauteed; a bit brown without being burned; a bit soft without caramelizing. I couldn’t tell if the beef was an actual roast or sliced from a pressed deli “roast”. It was probably the latter, since they’re also a deli, but it had texture; not quite the grain of a slice of roast beef, but also not aspic smooth. The au jus was excellent, mostly for what it was not. It had the taste and texture of roast drippings, which are not really “all that”; too many restaurants try to fix that when it doesn’t need fixing. No horseradish, which I didn’t notice until typing this up. Since I liked it and rate it above average without noticing the lack of horseradish, I’d have to say that ups its ranking.

The Laird enjoyed his hamburger, but we both agree that burgers are just burgers, once one gets beyond the cardboard that most fast food places serve. That’s why my test sandwich is not a burger. There are plenty of good, even interesting, burgers out there, but they’re not just a hamburger, which this was. Note that this was not their wagyu burger, just the regular one. I’ll have to try that, next time I’m there. I’m not sure wagyu will make a difference in burger. Wagyu is mostly about marbling, which isn’t really relevant once one grinds it up because fat from elsewhere can be added.

This made me realize that I’m woefully behind in the Every Eatery posts. I need to run around taking pictures so I can catch the blog up to reality.