Not All Deli Meat Is Created Equal

Goodbye to all that Boar's Head

Alex has been making me sandwiches for almost five years, but he wasn’t surprised when I switched up my order.

“It’s bad. This shit is disgusting,” he says as he points at the dozen-or-so various hunks of Boar’s Head meats in the deli cooler. “I wouldn’t eat it.

My normal order had been my garbage hero of Boar’s Head pepper mill turkey, melted Swiss cheese, turkey bacon, mayo, lettuce, and peppers, a bi-weekly treat I get myself because I want to feel something really clunking its way down through my body. It’s not the most damaging sandwich, but it does the trick. But things changed; I’d been slowly giving up on processed meats, but the recent listeria outbreak the company has been tied to was what got me to finally take a copy of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle and use it to hammer the coffin shut. Boar’s Head wasn’t exactly better for me than other deli meats, but it always felt like the quality option. And maybe it was once, but between climate change and the government rolling back restrictions and safety measures put in place to keep consumers safe, I just don’t feel like becoming a statistic when the next inevitable outbreak happens. If I’m eating deli meat, it’s not coming from some plant in the middle of nowhere.

All of our deli meat these days comes from the butcher shop. Emily and I have been going to Prospect Butcher since it opened a few years ago, but only recently started taking home some of their roast beef. Prospect Butcher is a Very Brooklyn sort of operation: worker-owned, they work directly with farmers, and if something isn’t in the case, there’s a chance they’re hacking off whatever cut you’re looking for in the back. It’s probably a little more expensive, but everything is pricey these days—I’m fine paying a little more not to die because I wanted a sandwich. But if a sandwich does end up doing me in, I’d like to be roast beef. I’m fine with it cold, but hot is heaven.

It’s probably a little strange that switching up how I do sandwiches in the time of Listeria has me realizing how perfect roast beef is, but I have a weakness. I love a meat sandwich, and what I’ve come to realize because I’ve been eating the good stuff is that roast beef is the king of deli. Turkey and chicken are only good if it’s actual meat; the smoked turkey breast sandwich at Mile End is a good example of this. Thin slices of turkey or chicken feel like an abomination, and I say this as a former deli turkey eater. And that’s not even taking into consideration that a lot of turkey doesn’t have much flavor, so the condiments end up doingmost of the work.

I’ve taken stock of my mental meat case, and the conclusion I’ve reached is that I only like bologna when it’s all-beef and only with mustard and on a roll from Wilensky's Light Lunch in Montreal; I respect all the Italian dry meats and saucisson sec, but I don’t eat pork. I love eating tongue, but when it’s an option on a deli tray…no thanks. Beef salami can be delicious, but I’ve also eaten some that had the consistency of damp tree bark.

Roast beef, meanwhile, is fun. You can do so much with it. Slap it on some white bread with a schmear of mustard or heat some up on a Kaiser roll with some melted cheddar cheese and a pile of crispy onions on top. Baltimore is a town I’ll always respect because I love The Wire, but also because of pit beef. It’s the sandwich that separates the weak from the strong, the sort of thing locals line up for in the cold before a Ravens game, loading up the roast beef sandwich on a roll with raw onions and/or horseradish. It sounds like a dare, almost as if Baltimore has its own sandwich version of a shot of Malört in Chicago, the sort of thing you try unless you want locals to make fun of you for wussing out. But it’s truly a great sandwich because roast beef is the only deli meat that could work with such intensely strong flavors you get from onions or horseradish.

You can tell a lot about a city from how it treats its roast beef. People love to act like L.A. is all sprouts and Erewhon, but it’s also the city that has Cole's and Philippe’s fighting over which place invented the French dip. My love for the Chicago Italian beef is well-documented, and the pride people from the Buffalo area take in being the homeland of the beef on weck is one of my favorite things about the region besides Bills fans doing insane crap during football season. Roll N Roaster and Brennan & Carr are two of the “Must-visit if you’re in Brooklyn” places even though they aren’t far from each other, I’ve had great roast beef from a number of spots with very Italian names, and I’ve heard the stories of the sandwiches in the Boston area but for some reason haven’t tried one despite visiting there a hundred times. One friend told me the North Shore beef sandwiches are “Like Arby’s…but good.” To which I replied, “Arby’s isn’t good?”

I still love other kinds of dead cow that you might find on a deli tray, whether it’s pastrami or corned beef, but they don’t have the same versatility. In fact, if I had it my way, serving either of them cold would be outlawed. That’s why I’ll always appreciate a place like Katz’s despite its long lines of tourists who found out about the place from one of six-billion places or TikTok people who told them You need to try this place; you watch them take the meat out of the steamer and slice it right in front of your eyes. It’s served hot, and that’s the way it should be.

But like a good 1980s teen comedy, there is a larger lesson to be learned here, and it’s about consumption. I don’t need meat, especially not-great meat. Those Boar’s Head sandwiches were convenient but they weren’t good and they probably did some damage to my insides. That shit is disgusting, like Alex the bodega guy said, and I’m never ordering it again.