983 W Foothill Blvd, Upland
So we watched a movie called Phenomena the other night. Has anyone else seen this movie? THOUGHTS ARE WELCOME WE’RE A LITTLE TRAUMATIZED.
Here are some things that happen:
- Several times, houseflies save the heroine.
- A firefly helps her find a severed maggot-covered hand.
- A small child wields a two-part spear that twists together.
- There are no transitions.
- There is a chimpanzee named Inga.
- One decapitation is done by a piece of sheet metal.
- The boarding school girls and teachers are really mean.
- Motorhead did the soundtrack.
Moving along, moving in fact all the way to where we live, out here in Pomona Valley, nestled between the San Gabriel Valley and the Inland Empire. This is an oversimplification, but the towns around us generally have a type of cuisine that they do better than the other towns. Pomona has legit tacos. Claremont, overpriced food. La Verne/San Dimas/Glendora: diner food and Americanized Mexican. Montclair has Costco. And Upland has sandwiches.
Four times we’ve trekked over to Upland to add another notch on our Summer of Sandwich rapidly expanding belt, and each trip has been mostly commendable, and sometimes entirely fantastic. Today we went to the Upland German Deli, our second German deli of the summer—and certainly our favorite. While it’s no Italian market, they have German magazines, various strange German foods (a lot of mustard, pickles, and pickled fish), in-house baked rye breads, a variety of pretty good-looking pastries (Black Forest Cake, sacher torte, an enormous arm of strudel), and sandwiches: some standard American combinations, bratwursts, reubens, beef dips, schnitzels, liverwurst, and more.
The meats are Boar’s Head, and the ingredients and French (German?) rolls are nicely crusty on their exterior while remaining perfectly soft within. We planned to get two sandwiches, then we saw the sandwich a guy ahead of us ordered. So we only got one sandwich, the Grinder ($750)—here’s why:
Quick sandwich rundown: obviously that provolone cheese was not provolone, it was a bad bland Swiss, and the lettuce wasn’t shredded…but those are the only two strikes we have. The roll, as mentioned, was dead-on–not the most flavorful on its own, but the texture any good sandwich should have (it’d be great as a dip). The meats were a fantastically spiced salami, very good ham, and very good turkey. The addition of both a balsamic Italian vinegar and pickled jalapenos (just enough for a slow background burn) made this sandwich slightly unique and, overall, very good. And for $7.50? One of the best deals we’ve had, too. (We didn’t get the potato salad. If you’ve been reading this, you know why.)
Was this one of the best sandwiches we’ve had this summer? No, not really. But as a perfect representative of our still-in-progress Unified Sandwich Theory©, we fully endorse the simple goodness of the Upland German Deli’s Grinder, and we look forward to going back to trying some of their other offerings.
- Overall Balance/Taste: +1 point
- Quality of Ingredients: +1
- Bread: +1
- Integrity:
- X-factor: twins!!!: +1
Overall: +4 points, or a perfectly tasty Pat’s Philly Cheesesteak (wit)
(Previous post here. And coming up–we’re headed west! We’ve got tongue and Godmama in our sights!!)