Roomali
97 Lexington Ave., entrance on 27th St., (betw. 3rd & Lexington Aves.),
212-679-8900
Cabo Rojo
254 10th Ave., (betw. 24th & 25th Sts.), 212-242-1202
Maybe you’ve heard about the food-related documentary that made a splash at Sundance, Super Size Me. The filmmaker ate nothing but McDonald’s for a month or so, ending up significantly heavier and less healthy than he’d been. Gee, who could have guessed that would happen?
It’s easy to mock and pity McDonald’s-eaters. At the moment it’s fashionable among the elite to do so–much as it was just before the elite helped elect our first McDonald’s-scarfing president. More interesting to me is where the trend is taking us. In New York, the answer is: Subway. Once you start noticing the spiffy yellow signs, it’s creepy how many new franchises have popped up in the last few months. A haphazard little investigation revealed that most of them are doing quite well. The success could be partly due to the chain’s relative novelty, as well as an aggressive advertising campaign aimed at dieters. It’s surprising anyway.
Because how can a soulless sandwich chain compete in a great sandwich town? The best answer is that the new franchises are uniformly well-run. Your local deli might suffer from line-management issues. Some employees at mom-and-pop places are too casual about getting stuff wrong. (I’m all for boycotting delis that give mayo when you asked for mustard, even once.) At every new Subway I’ve visited, the employees have been trained to keep the line moving. The physical setup encourages patrons to watch the sandwich assembly process and catch any errors.
Then there’s the diet thing. Subway’s "Atkins-Friendly wraps" are the most boldly disgusting fast-food to show up on television since KFC’s honey barbecue popcorn chicken. The chain’s (admittedly handy) information pamphlet shows nutritional counts on the normal sandwiches as compared to similar concoctions at Wendy’s and Burger King–and, of course, at your local deli. Order from the low end of Subway’s calorie spectrum and you’ll get a sandwich with a laughably paltry amount of meat on it.
Which is a bit of a blessing in disguise, considering that meat. It’s nastier than Boar’s Head, and never sliced fresh for your sandwich. The sauces on the hot sandwiches are your typical fast-food gook; the vegetables are not fresh. Subway’s slogan, "Eat Fresh," apparently refers to their uncannily flavorless bread.
This is a selling point in Manhattan? It’s the rare neighborhood deli indeed that combines poor service with pre-sliced meat and rolls baked later than this morning. And if it does exist, it deserves to be run out of business by Subway.
There’s one new spot, well within the territory affected by the Subway explosion, where great fresh sandwiches are being served. It’s called Roomali. Located on 27th St., just off the "Curry Hill" strip of Indian restaurants on Lexington Ave., it’s definitely the place to go right now for a sandwich. Indian sandwiches? Yes.
Roomali calls them "rolls," and they go for $4 or $6 apiece. The shop’s owner, who also owns nearby Madras Mahal, must have caught wind of the "wrap" craze and realized he could do it one better. Instead of omitting decent bread, Roomali uses freshly cooked, chewy paratha. It’s superb. In Caribbean Brooklyn, neon signs refer to this tasty bread via blazing neon signs: "Hot Roti"–but it’s rarely so crisp yet pliant as Roomali’s.
The aloo roll houses slow-cooked potato, spiced like the inside of a samosa. The sandwich itself, in fact, amounts to a more user-friendly version of that deep-fried appetizer. Roomali’s wraps are densely packed and carefully folded. They feel perfect in the hand and never fall apart.
Another vegetarian option is the chana pakora roll–fried chickpeas. This was the first one I tried, and a very pleasant surprise. The little patties aren’t the least bit greasy, nor do they feel too starchy to be served in bread. The fry-job is so light as to give the impression of chickpeas pureed and purified. The seasoning is a brother to the best falafel, similarly robust yet with a character all its own.
My favorite was the chicken tikka roll. Decent chicken tikka isn’t so hard to find, but it turns out the stuff is much better on bread than with flowery rice. Tucked into Roomali’s roti, fragrant with herbs, tender tikka finds its American home as portable lunchtime staple.
Two other meat rolls are made from kebabs. Roomali’s cooks simply remove the skewer from a single, narrow cylinder of marinated-and-grilled meat and wrap it up with fresh bits of spiced onions and lettuce. Reshmi is the chicken option; seekh is the lamb. Again, extreme freshness and expert seasoning guarantee a sandwich experience a cut above.
Roomali’s big drawback is that it’s slow, especially when busy. That’s just a reality of food made-to-order. Also, big eaters are unlikely to find a single Roomali sandwich completely filling. You can add a fried eggwhite to any roll for an extra 50 cents, which helps, and enhances the flavor of the kebabs especially. And one eggwhite adds only about 17 calories to a sandwich, if you care.
A few weeks ago, writing about Soho’s new Cubana Café, I mentioned that the Cuban sandwich there is of quality, though not a Best-of-Manhattan contender. Shortly thereafter I received an email from a local connoisseur of the Cubano, a friend I’ll call Iron Jeff. His comments inspired me to sample his two Manhattan favorites: the one served at Café Habana, a little Elizabeth St. restaurant always packed with twentysomethings, versus the version prepared at Cabo Rojo, a Puerto Rican counter-service diner that’s been in the Chelsea gallery district for about 40 years longer than there’s been a Chelsea gallery district.
The latter was my hands-down preference. I don’t remember ever before eating a Cuban sandwich that truly tasted of all the ingredients. On Habana’s, I saw toasted bread, pungent Swiss, juicy pork, ham, mustard and pickles, but in the dark one wouldn’t know they were all there. Cabo Rojo’s Cubano is a piece of work. Iron Jeff ranked it uno as well–noting also that it goes for $4, compared to Habana’s $7.
