My husband brought an order of chicken strips ($7) from Costco and I can’t say I’m impressed. I’m not a huge fan of chicken strips in the first place, but I do get them from Safeway when they’re on sale for $5 (which happens every couple of Fridays). These ones were thicker, denser, saltier and tasted like frozen fried chicken. On the other hand, my husband found them tender and liked that the strips aren’t seasoned (with something other than salt). They come with a sauce which seems like a mixture of BBQ sauce and honey mustard. I preferred honey mustard dressing.
Tag: deli (Page 1 of 2)
Hormel offers several “ready to heat” meat dishes, which occasionally go on sale at Safeway for $5 (from $13 regular price.) I shared this Beef Roast au Jus and Savory Sauce and the mashed potatoes reviewed below with my husband and it made a satisfying lunch for two.
The meat comes in a vacuum sealed tray and you only need to microwave it for about 3 1/2 minutes to heat it up. The large chunks of meat very much taste like pot roast, but they are incredibly dry. Imagine the driest beef you’ve ever had, and this is drier. Indeed, as I wrote about this I had to go and get a glass of water from recalling the mouth (and throat!) fill of this meat. The sauce had an OK, generic pot roast sauce flavor but it couldn’t return to the beef moisture that wasn’t there. I can only imagine they’re using the cheapest leanest cut to make this.
Hormel is an American public corporation.
I served the beef with Bob Evans Loaded Mashed Potatoes ($3.50 from $6.50 regular price). These were quite good. They tasted very much like freshly made mashed potatoes, and the added cheese and bacon enhanced the flavor without overwhelming them. Of course, even on sale that’s a lot of money for mashed potatoes, but they do save a lot of time.
I’ll definitely buy these again when they’re on sale. I would say the package serves 3 adults and maybe 4, if 2 of them are children.
Bob Evans farms are owned by Post, an American public corporation.
Where’s the chicken?
Bigfoot Bowls seem to be a new product for Safeway. They were advertised in their last flyer, but their website still doesn’t have pictures of the bowls. So I ordered blindly. They have several flavors, but I went with the Thai Style Bowl with Coconut Curry Chicken.
The bowls should be thought of as rice bowls with a tiny bit of chicken used as seasoning (though they also offer one vegetarian and one beef bowl). There is so little chicken that you cannot include chicken in most bites. The bowl did come with an orange ginger sauce to pour over the whole thing, but there wasn’t enough sauce to reach all the rice and red peppers.
The bites from this bowl which included the chicken were quite tasty, the curry was quite nice and the sauce was flavorful. But those that didn’t include it were boring. As I suspect the other bowls have the same problem with the chicken-to-rice ratio, I wouldn’t order them again.
Bigfoot Bowls is owned by New Jersey based family company F&S Fresh Foods
Pleasantly Surprised
Del Real meals were on sale last Friday for just $5 (out of ~$12 regular price) so I got the Chipotle Honey Chicken one. My husband has it last night and I ate the leftovers. It was great.
The meal consists of grilled chicken thighs cut into bite size pieces with a light sauce. It’s just the meat – no sides included. If you only eat the chicken it will just feed one a generous meal, but you can extend it to feed two by adding sides.
I was very surprised at just how this dish was. The chicken actually had the texture of grilled chicken and the sauce was quite nice, with only a hint of honey and spice, some smokiness and just an overall good taste.
This is the second hit I have in ready-to-heat meals from Del Real and next time they go on sale, I’ll buy and try the rest.
Or how to make quick tacos
Refrigerated, ready-to-heat prepared meats, are great to keep in the refrigerator (their expiration date is usually months after you buy them) for when you need a last-minute meal. You can add some tortilla and salsa to this one and make some quick tacos, or use them as a filling in a sandwich. Of all the ready-to-heat meats out there, I think Del Real carnitas might be my favorite.
The carnitas are pretty flavorful, though I’d characterized the marinade as mild. They are a bit on the dry side, but I do appreciate the lack of big chunks of fat (at least in this package). They do work better if you add some moisture to them, either through condiments in a sandwich or salsa/sour cream/guacamole in a taco or burrito. They do not have charred/roasted pieces, which I sort of miss, but there are overall a good product.
They are pretty quick to ready. They come in a pouch which you microwave for a few minutes before opening into the provided plastic bowl.
I usually buy them when Safeway has them on sale for $5 (off the $13 regular price). At that price they are a bargain, even though the package suffers from shrinkflation and only offers 15 oz.
Del Real is a majority owned by Guatemalan investment corp Corporación Multi Inversiones.
See other reviews of deli items.
Soft skin, fatty and very brined
When the kids were young, and omnivores, I used to make rotisserie chicken often. My mother in law gifted us a rotisserie many years ago, and it produced a very good and tasty chicken. Over the years, we’ve also bought our share of Costco rotisserie chickens and probably some Safeway ones as well – but as the kids became vegetarian, we sort of gave up on them. It’s thus been a long time since I even thought about buying one of this, much less at Safeway.
Still, they were on sale last Friday for $5 (from $10 regular price), in a variety of flavors, and I thought I’d give one a try. All but the “Traditional Whole Rotisserie Chicken” are actually roasted rather than rotisseried, and I’d ordered the “sweet smoky BBQ” flavor, but it wasn’t available so they substituted with the traditional rotisseried instead.
At 30 oz, the chicken is tiny – it doesn’t quite reach 2 lbs. You can’t buy such small chickens raw. But it’s definitely enough for a 3-4 people, mostly because you don’t really want to eat that much of it. The chicken was heavily brined and tasted very much of it. It had a weird, gummy texture, no doubt created by spending too much time in the brining liquid. It was fatty and not that enticing. The skin was a little overseasoned, but the flavor was fine. The problem is that it wasn’t very crispy – thus defeating the whole purpose of it being rotisseried.
I wouldn’t buy it again, even at $5, unless I was planning to use it for chicken salad or the like.
The best sandwiches in the world
I don’t remember when I first discovered Guigni’s Deli in St. Helena, but it was certainly over three decades ago. At that time, the Napa Valley was a paradise for a young like ourselves, short on money but seeking fun and relaxation. Wine tastings were mostly free and abundant. Of course, we needed food to absorb all that wine and Guigni’s Deli became our place to go for lunch. We loved the sandwiches so much ,that I think only one visit to Napa over these three decades, have we skipped lunch there. So when Mike suggested he wanted to spend his birthday in Napa Valley, I knew we would start our day by having lunch at Guigni’s.
It had been many years since our last visit, and the place has changed a bit. There seem to be fewer items for sale cluttering the store – it’s now more of a deli than a grocery. The bathroom behind the dining room in the back was also locked. The deli was also much less busy than we remembered it to be, though we did go pretty early.
What had not changed was the assembly line type of ordering. You should start by selecting your drinks and anything else you want to buy before going to the counter. Then you select and order your meat and cheese behind the meat/cheese counter, move to the right and select and order your bread, your veggies and your condiments, and finally move on to the cashier and pay for the whole thing.
You can then sit at one of the two tables by the front windows or go to the small dining room in the back. Of course, you can also take the food to go and have your own picnic at whichever winery allows you to do so (many no longer do).
As we were early, we were able to grab one of the window tables, which made the experience much more pleasant.
Mike started with a deviled egg, and I was reminded that it was at this deli that I learned about deviled eggs in the first place. I don’t like eggs myself (unless they are made into a dessert), and deviled eggs were not part of my upbringing. Mike was quite pleased, as in the past.
I will admit that, as is my custom, I considered ordering something other than a roast beef sandwich – just for novelty’s sake. But I couldn’t make myself do it. Since that first, amazing roast beef sandwich decades ago, that’s all I’ve ever had at Guigni’s and how could I change now? So I went with the roast beef and Muenster in a soft sourdough bun, standard condiments (including their Guigni juice dressing), tomatoes and added an avocado ($2.50, they use half in the sandwich). My sandwich was large and delicious. Days later, I’m still dreaming about it. It was soooooo good. Really, they have the best sandwiches ever.
Mike also got a roast beef sandwich, but he had his with the standard veggies and dressings, save for tomatoes. He chose brie as his cheese, and loved the whole thing. I took a bite but it was too overwhelming with sprouts for my taste. To each their own.
Mike didn’t get a receipt, but I think the sandwiches were about $15. Not cheap, but totally worth it.
Guigni's Deli
1227 Main St
St Helena, CA
707-963-3421
M-Th 9 AM - 3 PM
F-Su 9 AM - 4 PM
Notes from a New York City Foodie Trip
A visit to Russ & Daughters and Pick a Bagel
Among the many food items New York City is known for are bagels. The claim is that New York City tap water makes both bagels and hot dogs particularly delicious. My husband and I are not huge bagel eaters, as we try to watch our carbs, but we had to try one while in the City. And it had to be an everything bagel (though we ended up getting plain) with cream cheese and lox, as that’s probably the most popular bagel combination among New Yorkers.
There are a plethora of places where to get bagels in NYC, but among them Russ & Daughters holds special distinction. The small deli has been at its current location on Houston St., a block away from Katz’s deli, for over a hundred years – though in recent years they’ve open a few other branches. It specializes in smoked fish and caviar, though they also have some spreads, soups, salads and baked goods. I had read in several places that their bagels weren’t particularly good, and we had just had lunch at Katz’s and weren’t particularly hungry, so we stopped by to pick up some lox and cream cheese for later.
The genius of great lox, I was to find out, is not only how it’s cooked, but how it’s sliced. The knife skills of the cutter were phenomenal. He chose the best part of the fish from where to hand cut paper thin slices of salmon. The cutter offered Mike a taste of the salmon of his choice, and he decided on the Norway, a strong tasting lox that he loved. Still, he decided to get a 1/4 lb of the Gaspe Nova ($14) to take home, as that’s the one Russ & Daughters is best known for. We also got 1/4 lb of scallion cream cheese ($3.50) as they’re also known for it.
It wasn’t until our last morning in NYC that we were able to actually get some bagels to eat with the cream cheese and lox (just cream cheese for me, as I don’t like lox). We got the bagels at Pick A Bagel, which seems to be a chain, with a location a few blocks away from our hotel.
The plain bagels ($1.75 each) were good. I liked them, they had a nice chew and good flavor. Mike thought they were just average – then again, he doesn’t particularly like bagels, so maybe that’s at play. We ate the bagels untoasted, as this seems to be the most common way to do it in NYC. I feel that most of the bagels we get here need to be toasted to be really edible, but this one really didn’t need it. We also got a bialy ($1.75), which is an unboiled bagel topped with onions. I had it after we got home and I did enjoy it, but again, I didn’t think it was particularly remarkable. Still, I did like the chewiness and not needing to toast it.
I wasn’t as enthusiastic about the scallion cream cheese from Russ & Daughters. It was fine, but it wasn’t special. Other than the scallions, I can’t say it was better than Philadelphia. Mike, however, raved about the lox. He thought the Gaspe Nova was absolutely delicious. It did, indeed, have a mild flavor, but he didn’t mind at all. While the two types of lox he tasted were different, he isn’t able to find a favorite, he’d like them both again. And he does think these may very be the best lox he’s ever had – indeed, he thinks it’s very unlikely he could find a better lox, at least outside NYC.
So now you know, if you’re in NYC and you love smoked salmon, get some lox from Russ & Daughters. You can also order it online, but the shipping fee through Goldbelly is $55 for a pound of lox, on top of the $56 for the salmon!.
You might also try a different place for bagels, feel free to comment below on what your favorites are.
Russ & Daughters 179 E Houston St NYC 212-475-4880, x1 M-Su 8:00AM - 4:00PM Pick a Bagel 891 8th Ave New York City (212) 582-8333
Notes from a New York City Foodie Trip
Yes, we had the Pastrami Sandwich. And yes, it was as good as they said.
Katz’s Deli is perhaps New York City’s most famous restaurant. At least, it’s the one “must visit” restaurant in every list I looked in preparation to our trip to NYC. It has appeared in several movies, most famously, in the “orgasm” scene in When Harry Met Sally. Katz’s claims to be the oldest deli in NYC, and it has operating at its present location for almost a hundred years. Mike and the girls had visited it back when we last went to NYC in 2016, after the Democratic Convention in Philly, and had brought me a sandwich from there – I had been so exhausted after the convention that I barely left the hotel room. But I wanted to go myself and really savor that very famed pastrami sandwich.
As Katz’s is such a famous destination, it can also be impossibly busy – with lines which sometimes are supposed to near 45 minutes. Fortunately, it was pretty empty when we arrived before noon on a cold February day and I was able to find a seat right away.
Katz’s has a somewhat confusing system of serving customers, but it works fairly well. When you go in, every person is given a red ticket at the door. The cost of what you order will be written on the ticket by either the people at the counter, where you order, or your waiter if you get waiter service. When you are ready to go, you present the ticket to the cashier at the exit, and pay the amount written on it. You can put all your purchases on a single ticket, but just make sure to keep your blank ticket with you and return it to the cashier when you leave. If you don’t have your ticket, you’ll be charged $50.
You have a choice of ordering your food at the counter and finding your own table where you can seat, or getting waiter service. Most of the available tables are for counter customers, but there is a small section at the back of the store (walk all the way back, and then go to the right, towards the bathrooms) where they have table service. If there is more than one of you, you can find a seat while someone goes to the counter and orders for the rest.
Katz’s very long counter is divided into several sections. If you are ordering a meat sandwich – or, I presume, just meat – you go to one of the “cutters” who will give you a sample of the meats you are interested in (make sure to tip him a buck or two), for you to choose. They are most famous for their pastrami, but they also have corned beef, brisket and others. We’d been considering a combo pastrami-corned beef sandwich, but after tasting the pastrami, Mike knew that’s all he wanted. After ordering your sandwich, you can go to the other parts of the counter to order other dishes and drinks.
Katz’s sandwiches are both expensive and huge, large enough to share as long as you are not starving (then, you might want your own or you might want to get a second dish). They are so filled with meat, that I found it easier to just eat the pastrami and forgo the bread – though Mike went for the sandwich experience. The pastrami was really very good, only slightly fatty, and just tasty and smoky (thought not overwhelmingly so). Sandwiches come with two types of pickles, full and half-sour, but as we don’t like pickles, they were wasted on us.
Getting to Katz’s on the subway from Times Square/Rockefeller Center was very easy, so it’s worth the trip, at least during those times when there isn’t much of a wait. You can algo get Katz’s goodies through a variety of delivery services, and they do ship nationwide.
BTW, there is no discount if your last name is “Katz“. We asked, as apparently lots of other people have (for those who are not in the US, Katz is a very common Jewish last name over here).
Katz's Delicatessen 205 East Houston Street New York City (212) 254-2246 Monday - Thursday: 8:00 AM - 11:00 PM Friday 8:00 AM - Sunday 11:00 PM
Though Bara’s Deli has been in San Leandro since the ’80’s and we’ve lived here for over 20 years, I didn’t try it until recently. It’s not in “our” part of town – though it’s pretty close by -, and there were other closer sandwich places. Still, I’ve heard good things about them and when, a few weeks ago, I was looking to try a Reuben sandwich, I decided to give them a try. And then another.
So far, I’m fairly happy. These are not the best sandwiches I’ve ever tried (that distinction goes to Giugni’s Deli‘s in St. Helena where, granted, I haven’t eaten in a decade but whose sandwiches were great for the two decades before that), but they were very good anyway. The sandwiches look a bit small, but they are quite substantial and they definitely won’t leave you hungry – if you can finish the whole thing.
I’ve had the Reuben twice now, and while it’s still the only Reuben ($11) I’ve ever had, I liked it a lot. The meat to cheese to sauerkraut to bread ratio was perfect, it was a very well balanced sandwich, and made me a fan of Reubens. I just ordered the ingredients to make some myself. I’m actually not sure if this sandwich is meant to be hot – both times it came in the same bag with another hot sandwich, but it works well either hot or cold.
My husband had The Hangover from their specialties menu ($11.25), a sandwich consisting of “hot roast beef, Swiss cheese, red onions, jalapeños, mayo, BBQ sauce on Dutch crunch.” We both liked it very much, again the ingredients were well balanced.
I was less enthused by the meatballs. I had a meatball sub ($10) one time and a side order of meatballs ($6 for a small) another. The meatballs are small, are too salty and they otherwise have a very generic taste. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were commercial rather than made in house. They are a bit too dense and just not particularly tasty.
The caprese panini ($9) was better. Again, the ingredients were in the right amounts to balance each other and the bread, and the whole sandwich was tasty. My daughter – who ended up eating it – would have preferred fresh basil (in season now) to pesto, but that’s not a big deal.
A “make your own” roast beef sandwich ($10.50) was good and had ample meat.
The one real disappointment was a side of macaroni salad ($3.50) which was just a waste of calories.
In all, we’ll continue ordering from Bara and I look forward to trying other sandwiches.
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