Meathead Brothers

More from our adventure at Brookgreen Gardens...

Giant grasshoppers, as big as your hand!

beautiful butterflies everywhere

Pablo is very curious about the platypus

say cheese!

After we had exhausted the gardens (or rather the gardens exhausted us...) we were hungry for a late lunch.  We found a great sandwich place called Meathead Brothers, serving Philadelphia-style deli sandwiches. Some of their sandwiches are very traditional, while others are a bit more unique. All made with fresh ingredients, a lot of which are locally sourced.

One of their more popular sandwiches is the Italian Stallion...ham, salami, and capicola on thick Italian bread served with provolone, lettuce, tomato, and onion.  Their Carolina Sweetie has sweet sausages with sauteed peppers and onions on a toasted Italian roll.  The Smoked House Hoagie has smoked turkey, applewood smoked bacon, and smoked gouda. Or how about the Gobbler Panini with turkey, stuffing, swiss cheese, and cranberry sauce!

There were so many delicious sammys to choose from! But we finally settled on Its Got Meat and Meathead's Reuben. Its Got Meat was piled high with, well, meat! And lots of it!  Roast beef, turkey, and ham plus applewood smoked bacon, provolone cheese, lettuce, tomato, onion, all piled high on thick Italian bread. And it came with truffle fries! Great meaty sandwich with some earthy rich fries!

The Meathead's Reuben...corned beef, swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing served panini style on marbled rye bread. (Am I the only one who thinks of Seinfeld when I hear "marbled rye"??) I had garlic fries with my sammy. I wouldn't say Reuben's are my favorite deli sandwich but I do enjoy a good one. And I have to say this was probably the best Reuben I've ever had! A definite winner!

It was an interesting treat getting to chat a bit with the owner as well! A vibrant, sensible down-to-earth kinda guy trying to make a living making good sandwiches with local products! Will definitely be back!

Pablo approves!!

Pablo gave Meathead Brothers 4 ants!

***UPDATE*** Literally the day after I posted this, I found out that Meathead unexpectedly closed up shop, apparently for good! I'm not sure what happened but they will be missed!

Santini's Deli

I apologize I haven't been putting up blog posts as quickly as I used to. I've been pretty busy...training for my first 10K in August, I just spent the last three days painting my bedroom (and still have a small half bath to do), and getting things ready for the music classes I teach at my church school which goes year-round (a week from Monday is the first day back!), among a million other things.  My "weeks off" from school have been quite busy.  But in the midst of all that, I have about 4 or 5 food adventures running through my mind just waiting for the opportunity to be put in a blog post such as this.

So I wanted to do a quick post about a local deli we recently just tried out.  Its called Santini's. There are actually four locations in the area I believe.  Unfortunately, there are not a lot of true deli's like this around here in Northern VA, where they make genuine NY style subs and pizzas, so when you find one and its good, you gotta tell people about it!

A fancy place, this is not.  But if you're looking for a good old fashioned sub (and want to avoid Subway), this is the place to go.  They also have pizza, calzones, and even breakfast items in the mornings like a steak, egg, and cheese sub!  We've only had a couple of their regular subs so I can only speak towards them. However some friends of ours had their pizza and a calzone and attested to their yumminess as well.  The subs though were off the hook! We went there twice almost in the same week!

The first time we went, I had the Chicken Club...marinated grilled chicken breast on a toasted kaiser roll topped with provolone cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise.  The chicken was flavorful and moist and all the veggies crisp and fresh, and the bacon was crispy and smokey! A total win!

Superking got the Godfather.  He was so in love with it he got it again the second time we went. So I had to get one too to see what all the fuss was about.  The Godfather is an 8" toasted sub roll (though you can also opt for the 12") topped with three of the most delicious deli meats...Genoa salami, capicola, and proscuitto. Also it comes with provolone cheese, lettuce, tomato, hot peppers (though I skipped these myself), and their own house-made Italian dressing.  It was an awesome hearty, meaty, fresh sandwich.

Last but not least, are the fries.  They offer three different types of fries there at Santini's...steak fries, curly fries, and spicy santini fries. Of course we went for the spicy ones.  They are basically hot thin crispy fries sprinkled with Old Bay seasoning.  Super yummy!!

So nothing earth-shattering here folks.  Just a simple, local NY-style deli that serves great subs.