Tuna, no melt... Bouchon Bakery

Okay, so last week I got a text from my good buddy JSL, and he shot me a text that he was gonna be in the city for an interview. So we connected on facebook and decided to get together for lunch after his interview. After discussing this very blog, we decided to find a diner that would serve me the finest tuna melt (he's a vegetarian; I know, please refrain from booing). We settled on Eisenberg's (I think that's the place) in the Flatiron district, but we ran into all sorts of snags and ended up @ Bouchon Bakery in the Time Warner building @ Columbus Circle. Bouchon Bakery is a boulangerié style joint specializing in artisan breads and other manner of baked goodness, but since we really couldn't find a diner, we settled in here because they had a pretty nice sounding tuna salad sandwich which, due to time constraints I decided to investigate...



What you see above is Bouchon Bakery's Tuna Niçoise on Palladin, featuring a very nice (celery free) tuna salad, Niçoise olives, sliced hard-boiled egg, sliced radishes, bibb lettuce, and garlic aioli. Swap out sliced pickles and insert some nice, crunchy gherkins (sweet touch).

Now, I KNOW it's not a melt, but it was delightful surprise. Very pleasant, great flavor and the garlic aioli was perfect with the bibb lettuce. The olives really upped the ante for the tuna salad and seriously, who could be mad @ a boiled egg? Hell, I didn't even mind the sliced radish! However, into every life a little rain must fall, and this beautiful little sandwich was no exception. Tho the bread overall was great, the crust was simply too thick to cut with a butter knife (yeah, I got all siddidy and attacked this thing knife and fork style; just couldn't figure out any other attack plan). Also, with the bread infirm and not toasted, with that mound of tuna salad goodness on top, it's a bit awkward for simply bare-handing it. The crust of the bread was the only issue I had however, and that could have been over come with a sharper knife.

The brew accompanying the sandwich in question is Blue Point Brewery's Toasted Lager. Excellent Brew. I'm sure I mentioned it in the past somewhere on this blog. Reach back for it.

Bouchon Bakery's Tuna Niçoise gets four tomatoes. Gherkins... nice touch...

Return of the Mack!

Well, not exactly. It's been just short of a year since my last post on this little blog sandwich and I gotta tell ya, it's not a minute too late. We know what the primary focus of this blog is, and for those out of the loop, this blog may or may NOT be all about a sandwich. That sandwich is my diner favorite, the Tuna Melt. One of the reasons I fell out of updating this blog like I shoulda was that I kinda became disillusioned with the state of the sandwich. In diner after diner it was the same old song: open faced, on wheat with american cheese as yellow as the sun... with a slice of tomato on top. Now, I don't HATE that, but there needs to be SOME variation from one diner to the next, y'know? The only place I've been that completely OWNED the damn thing was Cafe Intermezzo on Peachtree Road in Atlanta, Jawja (see my June 08 entry) but I've not encountered anything that's come even remotely close since then. So yeah, I have been in a major Tuna Meltdown for a while. But I said to myself, 'Dude, you gotta get out and hit a diner, ANY diner and have a melt.' Well, I went out to run some errands in the Lincoln Center area yesterday and in between I stopped into a nice looking spot by the name of Lansky's...


Very nice spot, nice atmosphere with a couple of older ladies at the table next to me discussing their investments, family issues and other fun stuff. They discussed their business so openly I almost wished I was a scam artist. But anyway, the wait staff was very attentive and all was good. So even tho it wasn't on the menu, I sat and ordered that ol' diner staple, the King of Diner sandwiches. The waiter asked me what bread I'd like which is a great sign, so imagine my disappointment when the selection was limited to white, wheat or rye. Then he asked what cheese I would like. Also a great sign, also a limited selection, but with a new contestant: GOAT CHEESE! Let's go with the goat cheese on rye! Ordered a Goose Island Summertime and doodled in my sketchbook until my sandwich came.



Look at that. I was somewhat mortified when the thing arrived. It appeared that it was merely smeared with CREAM CHEESE! And let me tell U, that picture doesn't tell the whole story because there was a LOT of it. To quote a young lady I know it looked like it was covered in icing... "So much icing!" I had to try to remove as much of it as I could, but the problem was that the goat cheese simply over-powered the experience of the sandwich itself. The texture was all wrong, not melty at all, and the bread wasn't toasted enough. The cole slaw looked great and if I gave a damn about cole slaw I would have been all over it, but I can't stand the slaw. Their made from scratch pickles on the side were great tho and I needed them in order to get thru this failure of a tuna melt. But I must qualify this review with the recognition that the deal breaker was likely the goat cheese with simply bummed out the whole sandwich. That being said, y0u simply cannot serve a tuna melt WITHOUT fries or chips if U aren't doing amazing things with the sandwich itself. Intermezzo can get away with that, but Lansky's of NYC? You guys need to rethink that...

So while the sandwich itself gets two tomatoes, I will say that the Goose Island Summertime was very pleasant and definitely rocks with fish. Check it out before the leaves turn! See ya @ the next diner. I'm thinking Lower East Side next time around...