Chicken Salad Sand­wich Toasted

Famil­iar way of eat­ing a lunch — from a brown bag, just like in ele­men­tary school. This and fresh baked sand­wich breads are the allure of my favorite sand­wich shop in Hous­ton.  Order­ing is sim­ple. You pick up a clip­board which has a menu and pen­cil attached for your con­ve­nience. The menu is lit­er­ally a brown bag on which you cus­tom build your sand­wich; your choice of fresh baked breads, Boars Head meats and cheeses, veg­eta­bles and spreads. To com­plete the meal there are a good selec­tion of chips, fruits, coleslaw, and red potato salad. This counter ser­vice restau­rant uses a lit­tle higher qual­ity ingre­di­ents than most sand­wich shops — such as red onions, deli pick­les and cheeses, and green let­tuce rather than ice­berg. Their chicken salad  and tuna salad sand­wiches are big on high qual­ity, lower salt meats; and not big on may­on­naise. i.e. The over abun­dance of mayo and salti­ness are sure signs of pre-packed salad.

There is a good selec­tion of drinks avail­able such as ice tea, lemon­ade, and pre­mium sodas. The breads are big a part of the taste; they are made from long ris­ing sweet sour­doughs with chewy, brioche like tex­ture to them. This gives them a nice bite and arti­san feel that you can savour with­out hav­ing to rip your teeth into or gnaw on. All breads are all locally sourced.

The restau­rant has a lit­tle bit of an artsy, funky chic look to it with alu­minum buck­ets and chairs for a sort of Austin feel. There is also free wi-fi at many of the loca­tions for your study­ing plea­sure. I am hop­ing that this becomes stan­dard at all loca­tions. While wait­ing for sand­wich check your e-mail on one of the free com­put­ers or read one of the mag­a­zines. Note that the menu brown bag can be printed on web­site and filled in ahead of time. So if you have a co-worker who has to work through lunch you can get him/her exactly what they want.

The Brown Bag Deli

http://thebrownbagdeli.net/