The Apple Cleanse

Since Clubs Are Trump is about eating sandwiches covered in bacon, I thought it might not be a bad idea to interrupt the Club Sandwich Tour of Pittsburgh for a one-day cleanse.

Healing with Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford describes this treatment as the Gall Bladder Flush, and recommends that it "be done with the guidance of an experienced health practitioner." But mine wasn't.

Pitchford's flush entails eating nothing but apples all day long. As many apples as you want, with water or herbal tea to drink. The final touch is a mixture of olive oil and lemon juice, drunk just before bed.

I've been aware lately of an increased feeling of biliousness, figuratively speaking. So, when I saw that simply eating lots of apples (and nothing else) might help, I thought it might be worth a try. Besides, it's apple season.

I got my apples at the farmers market. Pink Lady, Winesap, and Granny Smith, from Paul's Orchard, Joffre PA. All of them were crisp, juicy, sweet-tart and delectable.

I had two big Pink Ladies for breakfast, and I wasn't hungry again until lunchtime, at 1:00. (I'm frequently hungry way before lunchtime. That didn't happen after a breakfast of apples.) At lunch I had apple slices, about 2.5 apples' worth. By late afternoon, I wasn't exactly hungry, but I was tired. And kind of spacey. And when I saw others eating bread and butter, or fried rice, or corn chips, I did feel a certain longing.

Dinner was a large dish of sliced apples--four or five apples, several varieties. By evening I was tired, and I didn't feel especially focused, but that's not all that unusual after a hard day of work, so who's to say the nothing-but-apples diet was to blame?

The lemon juice and olive oil mixture was a pretty chartreuse color, and not too yucky. It tasted like salad dressing. Two or three spoonsful were nice. By the fourth or fifth spoonful I was getting tired of it. After eight or nine spoonsful, I said the hell with it and didn't drink the rest.

But I drizzled some of it on my toast the next morning. It was good, and I was happy to be back on regular food again. Also coffee. I had missed coffee.

I ate my toast, drank my coffee, went for a walk, and concluded that the apple cleanse didn't really make a difference. Eating nothing but apples was just that, nothing more nothing less. I got to enjoy an abundance of farm-fresh local apples, but well, it didn't exactly revoluntionize my life.

Until later that afternoon. Twenty-four hours past my three-apple-lunch, I felt cleansed. I felt light. I felt like I'd been living my life filthy and bloated for so long that I'd come to think of filthy and bloated as a normal state, and now that I knew the difference, I would never let myself get so sludgy and sluggish ever again.

That is not to say I am giving up club sandwiches. Perish the thought. The Club Tour must, and will, go on. But we'll stop for apples every so often.

Bloomfield Sandwich Shop

Warm, welcoming, generous.

That is the Bloomfield Sandwich Shop, and that is the delicious sandwich I had there.

There is no club per se on the Bloomfield Sandwich Shop's menu, but there is a grilled chicken sandwich. And when you order the grilled-chicken sandwich, you can ask for it on toast, with bacon. And they'll offer you lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise. So, even though they may eschew pretentious labels, they do make a sandwich very much like a club.

Very much like the ideal club. The grilled chicken was a juicy, flavorful delight. And it was a nice big piece. No stinting on the chicken. Or on the bacon. There was so much bacon, I almost felt guilty. I expect the bacon to be more like a topping, but in this sandwich, it was a filling. There was almost as much bacon as there was chicken. And there was almost as much tomato and lettuce as there was bacon--a lovely, wavy wedge of lettuce and a thick slice of tomato were right there beneath the top slice of crispy white toast.

Everything about this sandwich said, enjoy.

And I really, really did.

Perk Me Up

This stop on the Club Sandwich Tour comes down to one question: Do you like avocado?

If you do (and I do! I do! I do!) then this is the sandwich for you.

The "Tenth Ward Turkey" is all about slippery green avocado coming together with crisp, salty, smoky bacon in a delicious sandwich.

There's turkey here, too, and Swiss cheese and enough leafy lettuce to make you feel that you're getting a serving of veggies in, even before you get to the yummy (and healthy!) corn-and-bean salad. The bread, I'm sorry to say, was just ordinary. But they offer this sandwich as a wrap, too. Might be worth a try.

Club Sandwich & Deli

Remember that advertising jingle that went “Have it your way…”? Well, of course, what it truly meant was: If what you want is a mass-produced burger on an insubstantial bun, then you can have your choice of condiments on it.

And that’s unfortunate, because after visiting Club Sandwich and Deli in Sharpsburg, I’ve been running around joyously singing, “have it your way!” and meaning it.

Club Sandwich and Deli lets you design the club sandwich of your dreams. Lots of places make sandwiches to order, but this set-up is special. The menu emphasizes double (or triple!) -decker sandwiches. Bacon is included.

Let me say that again. Bacon is included. Like, it is assumed that your sandwich is going to have bacon on it.

In addition to the bacon, you pick two kinds of meat. And cheese, if you want it.

I got the turkey club—turkey and turkey and bacon, lettuce, tomato, on white bread, green frill picks, and the most delicious, amazing, playfully sweet-yet-tangy, fresh-tasting, crisp pickle slices I’ve had in a very long time.

The turkey was fresh and layered on generously, but without making the sandwich too huge and daunting.

See that little vat of sauce, lower left? That is horseradish-rosemary sauce. Delicious, smooth and sweet. I thought it was a classy touch.

Dunning's Grill

“I’ll have what she’s having.”

If only I’d said that.
Instead, I said, “I’d like the chicken club.”
And this is what I got.
A delicious sandwich, to be sure, but not a club. No way, no how.

Dunnings has three “clubs” listed on its menu. And I saw someone at an adjacent table eating a club-looking club sandwich—double-decker, lettuce, tomato, etc. She must have known what to order. Counterintuitively, not the Chicken Club. The “Chicken Club” is a chicken breast, topped with bacon and melted provolone and served warm on a fluffy white bun. No frill picks, no veggies, no toast, nothing in common with a club sandwich, except the bacon.

This anti-club wasn’t bad. In fact, for a non-club-sandwich sandwich, it was pretty tasty. The bacon was plentiful, slightly chewy, cozy warm. The cheese was melty in the middle, grilled-crispy on the sides. The chicken itself was moist. I think it really could have used some lettuce and tomato, but that might just be my club-sandwich wistfulness speaking.

Deli on Butler Street

The American Club at Deli on Butler Street in Lawrenceville is a superior sandwich.

Someone at the Deli on Butler Street knows where to get good tomatoes. Look at 'em -- bright red, muscular. I never realized how much the tomato slice added to the club sandwich experience until I got this really, really good one. And look at that lettuce -- green and leafy. Yum. None of this flavorless crunchy or--God forbid--shredded stuff. The veggies make a difference. Veggies on a club. Yur doin it right.

But really, who has time to contemplate the veggies when the meat on the sandwich is this good? This club has both turkey and ham. I love that. It seems so generous. In fact, it doesn't just seem generous, it is generous. There is a lot of meat on this sandwich. And that's before we even get to the bacon.

Know what they do with the bacon here? They crumble it! What a good idea. It makes getting a mouthful of sandwich a completely different experience. Forget the tension of incisors struggling against crisp or chewey bacon. Instead, the crumbles tumble into the mouth, along with the ham and turkey, the gentle lettuce and the tangy tomato. Ah.

The bread is light, fresh Italian bread. Delicious bread, nothing wrong with it. Except. And I feel churlish even bringing this up, but it isn't really the right kind of bread for a club. I can't help but feel that white toast--or even Italian toast, just toast the delicious bread they already have-- would perfect this sandwich. Let the club be itself. The toast is as much a part of the club personality as the bacon or turkey or the double layer.

Double layer! There is no double decker here. You know, the sandwich was so yummy that I almost overlooked this major structural flaw. Isn't a club, by definintion, a double-decker sandwich? Maybe, maybe not. We've encounterd the single-layer club previously on this tour. Maybe it's a deli thing. Further research is required.

Pamela's Diner

I figured an establishment whose founders had been summoned to the White House to make pancakes for President Obama's Memorial Day breakfast would serve an outstanding club sandwich.

And the turkey on this club was certainly out of the ordinary: slabs of carved roast turkey breast, like Thanksgiving Day leftovers, not like deli turkey at all.

In the company of Presidential-quality pancakes, I expect a higher standard of club sandwich ingredients. The turkey was first-rate; the tomato was world-class, so why were they on a sandwich with processed American cheez fuud and Big-Mac-style lettuce?

And even though the pickle garnishes were adorable, they left the toast all mushy on top.