PEC Challenge: Bagel International

Get ready folks because I have about nine pork rolls that I'm about to dump on your heads in the next few weeks.  So if you missed the PEC's and are sick of looking at sandwiches without pork roll on them this is your time.  Bagel International is right on Main Street in Bradley Beach, about five blocks from the beach.  With flags from about 20 countries and a tag line of "Everything On A Bagel", you can literally get whatever you can think of and put it on a bagel sandwich.  We can save those options for another time like maybe when I've eaten all the available PEC's in the state of NJ (5% complete, by the way, moving faster than the government can vaccinate us, no big deal.) Until then, we are continuing on.  Two more PECs this week, a Brennan's ranked at the end of the week, and a special Kansas sized sandwich coming this weekend (because I don't have a smoker to use during the week). 

Bread Rating: 7.8/10 (Very solid bagel. Fluffy inside, perfectly toasted outside.  Not internationally imported though as the name suggests.) 

Pork Roll Rating: 7.6/10 (Thinly sliced pork roll, which might not seem like a lot in the picture but the full flavor was definitely there.)

Egg Rating: 7.9/10 (Hidden in the cheese is a very good fried egg.  Thinking the griddle here might have been internationally seasoned.)

Cheese Rating: 6.8/10 (Pretty average cheese, melted on the bottom, and the top ticks up the score.)

Sandwich Composition: 7.5/10 (A really nicely put together sandwich.  No slide, which is typical of bagels, and the SPK ratio was right on.)

Overall Rating: 7.52/10 (Another excellent Jersey Shore pork roll, no bias here as a Shore resident but all of these "beach" PEC's have been good.)

Price: $6

Bagel International is located at 48 Main St, Bradley Beach, NJ 07720

Top 25 NJ Sandwiches 2021 Challenge: Rose's Special, Carmen's Deli

 You might have missed the NJ.com article last week "New Jersey's 25 Greatest Sandwiches, ranked" or maybe you are not a subscriber.  Well, despite clearly ripping off my Talercio's Sandwiches, ranked (and my upcoming Brennan's, ranked blog coming this week) I'm happy Jeremy and Pete did the heavy lifting for me.  That's because starting this week, I will be driving my hot girl Jetta to all of these locations and trying the sandwiches myself under the anonymity of a small-time blogger and because I don't write for a media corporation, you can trust me.  "So how did you like the 25th ranked sandwich from Elsie's?" Funny story, since I'm clearly a professional, I (a very dumb person) didn't check to see if Elsie's was even open on Sunday's (spoiler: they aren't), so you can imagine how hard I was laughing at myself after driving an hour and 20 minutes to Haddon Township.  Luckily for me, Elsie's isn't South Jersey's only deli, so I called an audible and headed 2 miles down the road to Carmen's Deli, which is number ten on this list.  So excuse me for swapping these two, you live, you learn.  Carmen's almost always appears on "Best Of" lists not only for NJ but for the entire country, so I was pretty excited to go in there for the Rose's Special, named after a former owner.  Carmen's Deli opened in 1966 in the bizarrely named Bellmawr which you might recognize as the location of the bearded gym owner who defied the Governor's order to close this year.  Unfortunately, I didn't see him in the deli while I was there, and it seemed like Carmen's might be going through some renovations as they share the building that's basically branded with nothing but Dominos signs (back off, Dominos, everyone knows who you are). 

The Rose's Special features all the Italian meats (capicola, prosciutto, soppressata) along with not one but two different provolones (regular and sharp), roasted red peppers, onion, and an oil and pepper blend.  I have to admit to all of you that I'm not really a big fan of provolone, especially when it's sharp, but this is a really good sandwich and I'll tell you why.  The bread was absolutely elite, and the cold cuts were as fresh as you can get.  They call it a hoagie roll, but you will never catch me dead using that word.  If you like Italian meats and provolone, though, you have to absolutely try this sandwich, you can tell when a place really knows what they're doing, and Carmen's nails the sandwich execution. The subs here are $12 but they are big enough for 2 so you are really getting two for one, or if you are me, lunch and dinner.  So there you have it number 10 on the list opening up this exciting new feature, which I will be dropping every Monday until August. 

Carmen's Deli is located at 42 E Browning Rd, Bellmawr, NJ 08031

50 States Sandwich Challenge: Iowa

 Is it a hamburger? Is it a Sloppy Joe? Nope, the name is somehow even grosser. In Iowa, they lovingly call their sandwich the "loose meat."  If you're an old like me you probably remember this sandwich featured in the hit 90s show "Rosanne." (I never watched a second of that show in my life.) But this sandwich has midwest roots going all the way back to the 1920s where, as legend tells it, a Sioux City tavern owner invented "The Tavern Sandwich" to go along with the already popular Indiana invention The Pork Tenderloin.  The most popular and iconic of the loose meats come from the regional fast-food chain: Maid-Rite, founded in 1926 in Muscatine by Fred Angell.  How does it differ from a sloppy Joe, you might be asking? Well, there's no tomato sauce so while the meat is loose it isn't entirely sloppy.  We'll cover the Sloppy Joe in more detail when we get to North Dakota (I'm sensing a large midwest proclivity towards meat sandwiches) but until then enjoy this Loose Meat delicacy of Iowa.  The recipe I used was a Maid-Rite copycat so I'm going to assume this is what I'd get if I'm ever in Iowa. 

Ingredients:

1lb ground beef 

1/4 cup water

1TBL yellow mustard

1TBL granulated sugar

1/2 cup chopped onion

Salt

Pepper

Hamburger Buns

Ketchup, mustard, mayo, pickles for serving.

1. Combine the beef, water, mustard, and sugar in a large skillet. Simmer over medium heat until beef is cooked through while breaking up the clumps of meat with a spoon.

2. Stir in onion, salt, pepper. 

3. Serve meat on buns with ketchup, mustard, mayo, and pickles.