Critic's Review
With the temperature in the mid-60s, a walk across the bridge was feasible without risking drenching a shirt, so I headed over to pick up a sandwich at 11:30am. Of course I had to hit a draw bridge on the way over, so it took a bit longer to get there than expected.
I thought about a breakfast sandwich, because I really didn't want a 9" sub. But the breakfast sandwiches are ridiculous. It's $2.50 extra to add ham and cheese, so it's over $6 for an egg sandwich.
Inside it's still a big long room with uncomfortable seating
While there were only 2 people ordering in front of me, it was taking forever. Despite all of the people milling around behind the counter, most of them were useless trainees. There was one guy making sandwiches who clearly knew what he was doing, and he was training minimum wage workers that appear to have never made a sandwich before.
The sandwiches were taking a long time, so I used the bathroom. You have to take an elevator upstairs, and it's one of these 2 way elevators so it's very confusing. I suggest going before you come here.
They've swapped out the bagel making equipment for ovens specifically designed to make "artisan" breads.
It took 10 minutes to make the sandwich. This place must be a disaster at lunchtime. It seems to tax their resources to make 5 sandwiches.
Over the bridge and back to the condo.
A bag within a bag; with the Boar's Head sticker as if that's a plus. Boar's head is more marketing than quality; you want Thuman's or Dietz and Watson for premium cold cuts.
The sandwich looked ok. red peppers don't really belong on an Italian sub, but their other Italian choice seemed pretty weak.
The half cut view.
Kind of squishy. Not very well organized. I opened it up to see the distribution
Not the kind of tight, well organized sub you get at the really good sub shops. Kind of cheap with the mustard and banana peppers; I got more banana peppers with my 6" sub at Premo's. No oil and vinegar. Apparently they call green peppers "sweet peppers".
While the bread looked nice, I didn't really care for it. Too much crust and not enough bread for a sandwich, in my opinion. A hero should be soft; it's point is to hold the stuff inside, not to dominate the experience. There were no layered flavors; and the prosciutto and mortadella were junk; I was pulling stringy fat out of my mouth on every bite.
Conclusion
Baguette Abouddit is a marketing slogan more than an idea about food. Baguette subs sound like a good idea, but it's really not. Baguettes are hard and crusty and are something you eat with a spread of pate. It's not the kind of bread I want with a hero or a cheesesteak.
This place is using the same "idea" as Brooklyn Water Bagels; use equipment that makes the food so you don't need to hire artisan chefs to make it; and you can man your restaurant with fast-food level minimum wage workers. The problem is that you have a lot of people who know nothing about food making the food. They have a captive customer base here with the courthouse; I have trouble believing that many people will be coming here for dinner or on weekends for a sub.
Fatal error: Uncaught Error: Call to a member function getUser() on null in /usr/local/www/classes/comments-class.php:267 Stack trace: #0 /usr/local/www/classes/comments-class.php(75): threadedComments->formatComment(Object(stdClass)) #1 /usr/local/www/classes/comments-class.php(77): threadedComments->printParent(Array, 1) #2 /usr/local/www/classes/comments-class.php(100): threadedComments->printParent(Array) #3 /usr/local/www/insideftl/comments.php(74): threadedComments->printComments(Array) #4 /usr/local/www/insideftl/single-post.php(208): require_once('/usr/local/www/...') #5 /usr/local/www/insideftl/post.php(22): include('/usr/local/www/...') #6 /usr/local/www/insideftl/index.php(170): include('/usr/local/www/...') #7 {main} thrown in /usr/local/www/classes/comments-class.php on line 267