So I will be watching the new 5E deli with interest...I love a good sammich, after all. And when it finally opens for business, the first thing I am going to do is roll up a turkey & swiss and take a good, thick bite out of it. And from that first, hopefully delicious bite, I will be able to tell a lot about the quality of the deli: is it the sort of place that uses Oscar Mayer lunch meat, smothers everything in Kraft mayo, and needs excessive toppings and "secret sauce" to give it flavor? or do they smoke their own turkey out back and bake their own bread every morning and it tastes so good I don't even notice they forgot the mayo?
From their recent
design goals, it sounds like I am in store for a tasty sandwich indeed. I just hope they resist the urge to use bulk meats and cheeses from the warehouse grocery, or drown it in "special sauce" or whatever.
Well, I did it. I had driven by the 5E Deli several times over the last few months, and I noticed that they had turkey sandwiches on the menu, but I put off ordering one until I had time to actually sit down and enjoy one. And last night, I finally got the opportunity--to actually PLAY, instead of being the DM.
So I pulled up to the new October 5E Delicatessen the minute it opened. I walked in, and read the menu for several hours. Then I rolled up a Fighter with swiss on whole wheat like always (I was hungry, so I rolled up a 3rd level sandwich.) I grabbed my dice bag, and waited for my order to arrive.
Well, I'll be darned if it wasn't another one of those trendy turkey and swiss salad wraps on gluten free bread, with a side of movie theater popcorn. *sigh* It wasn't really what I had in mind, but I thought, hey, it's a new deli and they are still perfecting their craft. And lots of people like these salad wrap-thingies, after all. So I bit in, and played a few hours of an adventure that my friend Allen had cooked up for us.
I like the turkey...very moist. It's kind of hard to get this part wrong, honestly: fighters whack their enemies with weapons, and then there is pie. Pretty straightforward. Getting bonuses to my ability scores simply by choosing a career was strange at first, but I decided that it wasn't too bad after I chewed on it for a while. And they slow-smoked the meats with Advantage/Disadvantage mechanics, which taste much, much better than that complex, stacking-bonus-marinade that my 3.5E Deli uses.
And the cheese is decent too...even though it wasn't really Swiss. It was more like a blend of the 3.5E swiss and 4E brie. The backgrounds and themes are nice and creamy indeed, but I think I would have preferred just a couple slices of class skills. Oh well, not a deal-breaker.
But they forgot the mayo. Instead, they gave me lots of "special sauce," and I do mean LOTS of it. Why, oh why, do delis these days feel the need to slather their sandwiches with the same old magical sauce? Wizards and clerics, sure. Rangers maybe, if you are in the mod. But why do fighters need pseudo-magic mayo? Sure, you can call it "mayo," or "miracle whip," or "special sauce" or "dressing" or even "maneuvers," but we all know what it ISN'T. And it isn't mayonnaise. A tangy, fruity blend of encounter powers aren't really what I wanted on my sandwich. I just wanted a little dab of mayo...a little bit of weapon mastery, perhaps, at the very most. Not a floral bouquet of weird spices and aromatics that overpower the meat and cheese.
And why the flatbread? Seriously, why? Why must everything be flattened down and pressed into squares? I want a tabletop RPG sandwich, not a boardgame burrito with weird fillings. Sure, I can unwrap it, cut it in half, and stack the ingredients so that it more closely resembles a sandwich, but we both know how that works. It's sloppy, hard to eat, and halfway through it you will wish you hadn't.
My conclusion: it was a good sandwich. The price was right, it was very filling, and it was a nice change of pace--but it really wasn't what I had in mind when I roll up a Fighter. Maybe the other sandwiches on the menu are better--but in my experience, if a deli doesn't do a simple turkey and swiss the way I like it, the other sandwiches will follow suit.
So I'm going to keep driving across town for the 3.5E sandwich I have grown to love. But I'm not going to write them off completely; I will stop in every now and then when I'm in the mood for something a little more modern or exotic, just like I do with the 4E and Pathfinder Deli.