Secret Sandwiches Beat All Other Lunch Options
This is Highly Recommend, a column dedicated to our very opinionated editors’ favorite things to eat, drink, and buy.
It’s mystery meat in the best possible way. At Marrow in Detroit, a butcher shop by day, restaurant by night, butcher Nicholas Ponte and his team sell low-key sandwiches for lunch—first come, first get. And they only make 10 a day! They’re not advertised on any menu or blasted on social media. Instead, you can find them wrapped in butcher paper around noon, tucked into a refrigerated case to the left of the bar, by the pâtés and fancy butters and cans of pop. They use whatever they need to move: smoked ham, housemade mortadella and salami, roast beef, spicy pickle-y condiments, and anything else that’ll minimize the restaurant’s food waste. (They also make a few vegetarian sandwiches, which might have marinated tempeh, kimchi, green onions, and sunflower butter (pictured top left)!).
On a recent afternoon, I got the last sandwich of the day. The sturdy bread from Zingerman’s was insulated with mayo that escaped through the bread’s holes. (A sandwich with too much mayo is a sandwich with the right amount of mayo.) Inside, thinly sliced smoked ham was stacked like a crowd pushing butt-to-back through the turnstiles of a free Seger concert. Big leaves of spinach served their healthful, crispy purpose. The pickled chiles were spicy, sweet, and tangy. At $12, you get this huge sandwich, easily shareable. A sandwich from Marrow is one of the best takeaway lunches in town, especially if you add a bag of Great Lakes salt and vinegar chips and a can of Vernors.
But you’re not done yet. You’re here, aren’t you? You cannot leave that butcher shop without a souvenir, so I’ll highly recommend the butterkase-filled kielbasa called käsekrainer. That’s a smoked sausage with a melty, creamy German cheese as buttery as its name suggests—the sausage equivalent of a Juicy Lucy. You want it. You need it. But first, sandwiches.
Go there: Marrow
Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit
