While it may not exactly qualify as royalty, I’m more than willing to classify the Roast Beef and Mutz Sandwich at John’s Deli as the Dark Prince of Italian sandwiches. Ordering from a Brooklyn deli pretty much assures you’re about to face down a monstrosity of zeppelin proportions, but in addition to its essential heft, this one comes slicked with a jet-black gravy, the secret ingredient of which may very well be motor oil. It’s also piled with so many fried onions that I had to scrape some off, out of fear that my stomach would erupt in grease-fueled flames. John’s is an institution, founded in 1968, although from it’s name, neighborhood and the classic Boardwalk-style mural outside (more on this below) you’d guess it was far older. The title seems to stem from the existence of a second John’s spin-off down in Bath Beach (there’s also another in Staten Island, apparently), although the fact that the original location is under new ownership may have voided these associations. Circa 2016, the place seems to be in good hands, now run by a self-professed “kid from the neighborhood” who made the rounds with the locals while I dug into my sandwich. He also tried to sell me on the day’s special (Pulled Pork), which I’m sure is great, but had absolutely nothing to do with why I’d ventured out here. His proposal did make me think a bit, something to chew on while I dug into the thin-cut beef glimmering beneath a nest of toppings. There’s a definitive tension inherent to the business model at a place like John’s, where an an enterprising young chef attempts to turn out quality food under the heavy mantle of a neighborhood institution, catering to regulars who expect faithful recreations of their favorites, and also to outsiders like myself, culinary trophy-hunters just looking to snag a classic. Such a focus on old-fashioned-ness can make it hard for a place to stay fresh, and may help explain why so many archetypal delis turn into living museum pieces. As for the roast beef itself, it’s a second-tier salumeria standby which, despite noticeable divorcement from the raw materials of actual Italian cuisine, shares kinship with New World brethren like the Philly Cheesesteak, the New England Steak Bomb or Chicago’s Italian Beef. These are all hot sandwiches, in which the meat gets shredded or knife cut rather than passed through a slicer, then doused with some kind of lubricating agent and cut with aromatic vegetables; another notable NY version can be found at classic longshoreman’s haunt Defonte’s. These hot sandwiches are the deluxe counterpart to sliced roast beef sandwiches, which utilize the meat as a cold cut, one whose humble status (I’d put it one rung above sad-sack companion baloney) seems about as far from the heights of Italian salumi as possible. It nonetheless appears with regularity alongside capicola and sopressata at so many Italian sandwich shops, perhaps in a historical nod to a diverse, not-always-Italian customer base or the deli's ostensible German origins. So while the concept of a unified roast beef emerging steaming from an oven has definitive Old World history, it took American ingenuity to master the art of tearing to shreds and using it to pad out an overstuffed roll. A roast beef sandwich without overt cultural associations, a simpler, likely older standard-bearer for this tradition, can be found at two fellow local institutions: Roll and Roaster and Brennan and Carr. Getting back to John's, I can state that, apart from the sui generis tang of the obsidian gravy, the fresh mozzarella here was the finest component, and while the bread was a tad on the dry side, a subsequent toasting of the other half yielded pleasant results. Impressive, but not as much so as the mammoth sign looming outside.
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