The BLT at 'wichcraft is featured at #7 on NY Magazine's list of seasonal foods to try before summer draws to a close. This sandwich features Greenmarket tomatoes, whose availability determines when BLT season (euphemism for the dog days of August) occurs.
Today's lunch comes from the first of two (been to the Dallas area recently?) sandwich shops on my radar that refuses to spell out "sandwich" to the bitter end... er, beginning. 'wichcraft, as we're all aware, was created by one of those Food Network personalities. This alone should price it out of my reach. There's one by NYU whose tenured-faculty/student clientele ratio is approximately three godzillion-to-one. The only other place in this area which such distinction is Knickerbocker Bar and Grill... because who doesn't need a three course steak lunch to spice up his boring Tuesday afternoons?
The sandwich place is, relatively speaking, for the rabble; so I can afford to shell out $14.50 for lunch when I'm feeling lucky. No, it's not absurd. But keep in mind I could almost buy three feet of BLT at the Subway across the street with that money. The sandwich itself comes with a price tag of $9.87, which sounds rather arbitrary until you realize that this makes for a round figure when tax is included. I do appreciate that. However, it also means I paid almost five dollars for a bag containing about four potato chips and a bottle of pop. Okay, so the bottle was made of glass, and the chips were kettle cooked... but THREE FEET, I say!
The tomato was certainly the star of this sandwich, and given the other ingredients, that usually means that the bacon just failed. Even without the delicious distraction of pork, I've never really remembered a particular tomato like I will remember these. It didn't hurt that these "slices" came in roughly the same dimensions as short stacks of pancakes at IHOP. Killer tomatoes, indeed (okay last time).
My only method for assessing how "organic" something (so often do I find this necessary) has always been based on size. I remember pulling toothpick-sized carrots from my grandparents' yard as a child. Never has an unnaturally large, store-bought carrot tasted remotely as satisfying as the shrimpy ones I used to nurse from seed to snack. Maybe the recent sewage spill acted as supercharged fertilizer for these guys, but these were notably large tomatoes. From what I can gather, the Greenmarket name-dropping only suggests that these were "locally grown," and I can find no stipulations about what kind of BLT experience-enhancing chemicals were used in these guys.
Verdict: Well, I didn't really want to like it. When I found out that the tomatoes weren't necessarily hormone free, it started to taste better. Still, if I'm not paying for "organic," then I don't know why I'm paying so much for this smallish sandwich (it could have been three feet long!). Still, at the end of the day, I can't say I don't approve of anything that uses bacon in a constructive way. Constructive and tasty.
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