steakin' it out

Well, since the first installment of the Great Food Court Project, my work has truly been blessed by the gods, for this week, coupon books appeared in the break room at work. And these coupon books feature over two dozen coupons for food court restaurants in the vicinity!

So today, I headed over and ate at the Great Steak & Potato Company. Places like this always have slightly different names, but you can usually identify them by their predilection for serving french fries in a cup. They also chop up meat in tiny pieces and grill it and it becomes something kind of resembling a philly cheese steak.

If I were to order the things with the most interesting names on the menu, I would have ordered a Ham Explosion sandwich (ham, onions, peppers, mushroom and swiss cheese) and a King Potato, which features cheese, bacon, sour cream, and either olives or chives (I was sitting kind of faraway when I was taking my notes. I guess chives makes more sense but olives is funnier to me). Although the Great Potato (which is the King Potato with either steak or chicken) is a close runner-up, I guess because it kind of sounds like something Linus from Peanuts would sit around waiting for.

But I didn’t order those things. Instead, I chose a super steak sandwich, which is steak, cheese, onions, peppers, and mushrooms; mushrooms, of course, being what distinguishes a super steak from a regular steak. Also with my coupon I got free fries.

The food court was not as crowded as usual today, but even so, there were not many patrons at the Great Steak & Potato Company while I was there. I wonder if their food preparation methods work against them. On the one hand, it’s probably the only place where they cook the food when you order it, as opposed to placing it under a heat lamp, but on the other hand, when that place gets backed up, it’s backed up.

As I ate my super steak, I tried to learn something from the Great Steak & Potato Company by browsing their menu. In addition to the sandwiches, they also serve salads with the chopped up meat on them. They also have a wide variety of baked potatoes with lots of toppings on them. Some places in this cheesesteak genre will instead substitute fries for baked potatoes and serve loaded fries. I think I prefer loaded fries to loaded potatoes. I don’t know. As soon as I typed that I doubted myself.

My super steak was okay but not super. That said, I’m not really a cheese steak connoisseur and I tend to find these places kind of hit-and-miss. While eating, I tried to make a chart of how things can go well at these places, and how they can go bad:

Factors that make a good cheesesteak sandwich
-Bun a perfect mix of crispy and soggy
-A lot of cheese distributed throughout sandwich
-Proper ratios of mayonnaise or other special sauce
-Generally, I think shredded lettuce is better than big leafy lettuce

Factors that spell doom for cheesesteak sandwich
-Bun too hard, hard to eat
-Bun too soggy, sandwich falls apart
-Sandwich falls apart due to unwieldy ingredients, regardless of bun conditions
-Meat too dry

My chart also needs to include something about vegetables. There’s also something tricky about the vegetables in the cheese steak, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Anyways, it was okay. The fries were good although too salty. While I ate, I tried to decide if the awning and sign for the Great Steak & Potato Company was dingier and dirtier than its neighbors, but I think that might have been my imagination.

When I got back to the office, I had to get some Junior Mints from the convenience store downstairs to really complete the meal and close the palate. Just something to keep in mind if you happen to eat at one of these types of establishments and feel that something is missing when you’re finished.