Back on the Pickle Train
After being gone for more than six years, I have reentered the world of sandwich making. I started working at a deli/sandwich shop/pizza place/liquor store/soon-to-be-cafe last night. I’ll be doing around 25 hours a week there to pick up some extra dough.
The place is called the Brown Bag Gourmet, and its located about 200 yards from campus. I ordered a sandwich from there the first week I hit town three years ago, and I can’t tell you how relieved I was to find a place in the middle of nowhere that made awesome subs. They have a balsamic chicken sandwich that is so good that you’d rape Mother Theresa (who is dead, no less) just to get another bite.
I gotta say that it felt good to get my hands in the pickle jar again. I haven’t had to do that since I stopped picking up shifts at Engine House back in 1997. I only made about eight sandwiches last night (the place is mostly a lunch place), but they were all pretty heady if you ask me.
I also got to refind the meditative joy that is washing a professional kitchen’s load of dishes. I don’t have it with me, but if I did, this is where I would include an extended quote from Tom Robbins’ “Skinny Legs and All,” in which one of the characters found God in a sink of dirty dishes. This is the first kitchen I’ve worked in that actually has the stainless steel, three-sink layout: soaking, washing, rinsing. On top of that, the hot water in this place is, apparently, volcanic run-off, so when you’ve got the water going into a stainless steel sink, the whole thing becomes some sort of trial by fumes. It might not exactly cleanse the soul, but it will steam out the bad bits.
Thank god it has air conditioning.
The owner, whose name is Bob (what is it with me working for sandwich dudes named Bob?), is a second-generation sandwich-shop owner. He’s from Philadelphia and, supposedly, makes the only “genuine Philly cheese steak in Vermont.” People come from Burlington to get these things. That’s a 75-minute drive to buy a cheese steak, for those who are not so geographically-inclined. He’s also got one of the better wine selections in south-western Vermont, so he’s got people coming for that. And he’s also running the only place that serves freshly-cut deli meat on all his subs PLUS an extensive vegetarian and vegan menu. I think he’s singlehandedly trying to make Poultney a destination location.
Oh, and come the fall (I think), he’s renovating the place into a cafe type-of-place so that people have someplace to chill when they come in (it’s all to-go service now). Which means I’ll probably have to learn how to make lattes and shit like that. I don’t think that’s such a bad skill to have.
I guess what I’m saying is: It’s gonna be an interesting place to work.