The Reuben from Ruggby's

This week’s sandwich was the Rueben served at the venerable Ruggby's Food & Spirits, 4820 University Drive. An establishment steeped in beer drenched history – long known as a hang-out for tenured professors and toady students, pasty engineers and over-pumped jocks, and even an occasional drop-in by everyone’s favorite weather technologist, Bob Barron.

Now I’m a big big fan of the Rueben. I’ve had them from the meat-packing district in Cleveland, and the Carnegie Deli in New York. I’ve even made my share when I was a hotel cook, for all the Jewish snowbirds flocking through Florida in the winter. So I have some preconceived notions about what a Reuben should be: Obscene stacks of corned beef and dripping piles of sauerkraut, with Swiss-cheese oozing everywhere – and paramedics stationed nearby in case of emergency. My father-in-law insists that the rye needs to be of the dark polish variety, and I used pumpernickel when I was a cook, but I think typically most places just use regular old light rye – lest the darker versions overpower the guts of the sandwich?

Anyway, the Rueben is not a sandwich for the faint of heart. Or so it should be. However, we discovered a schism in our group surrounding the Reuben served at Ruggby’s. For me, it was a pale imitation of a full figured Reuben. You could even say it was not Rubenesque at all. So, I found it unsatisfying as a corned-beef based sandwich, but several members of our party thought this trimmed down version was just right. Cara pointed out that it was really a fancy grilled-cheese sandwich with corned-beef thrown in, while others thought the relatively light use of sauerkraut was a welcome surprise. As one would expect, the sandwich was quite oily – being grilled in butter and all, and offered plenty of calories. A side of fries or onion rings rounded out everyone’s plate –also rather oily, but they were all eaten and therefore we can assume they were pretty good. So I think to sum it up, those of us that seek out Reubens as a matter of course were not completely satisfied with this version, but those for which sauerkraut is simply an Oktoberfest novelty, found this version of the sandwich to be quite tasty and well balanced.

One additional note, Ruggby’s is for the most part a bar. It was very smoky. Something everyone in our party had gotten used to not facing on a regular basis.