I-94

Last night I stayed up way too late fiddling around on my father’s computer; it was nearly 3 am when I lay down to rest, so I didn’t set an alarm, and woke up at about 12:45 pm.

I went over to Metzger’s, which opened in downtown Ann Arbor in 1928, to try their Reuben, as part of my ongoing Reuben Extravaganza. Several weeks ago, I tried the Reuben at Max’s Opera Cafe in San Francisco and was sorely disappointed. It was great looking but bland tasting. If I hadn’t spoken the words “corned beef” twenty or so minutes before the item appeared in front of me, I would have had no idea what the generic meatlike substance in the sandwich might be. It was nothing like the corned beef I remember now and then eating as a child.

I arrived in Michigan last week with a plan to try all five of Zingerman’s Reubens; it turns out there are actually eight. Some of them don’t say “Reuben” in the name, but that’s what they are. Zingerman’s Delicatessen opened the year I moved to California. I never went there to eat until a few years ago, with Amy. Next to the deli is a café called Zingerman’s Next Door. When my parents were first married, they lived in an apartment in the house that is now Zingerman’s Next Door.

I began, last week, with Zingerman’s tempeh Reuben. While I waited to pick up my order, I looked over at Zingerman’s Next Door, at a window in that house: Did my mother as a newlywed gaze out that very window once upon a time? I sat in the upstairs seating area and realized the view outside was of my own former high school, Community High, where I transferred after Huron High shared their (accurate) opinion that I had a drug problem. The Reuben was not very good. Seva’s tempeh Reuben leaves Zingerman’s in the dust, and I almost aborted my project right there, but decided I should at least try their basic Reuben, which turned out to be fantastic. It had about two pounds of corned beef in it that was even tastier than I remembered from childhood. (Unfortunately, even if you eat there, your meal is served in a plastic basket, so I had to bite into the sandwich, as many routinely do, but it caused my chronic TMJ soreness to flare up painfully.)

I did master the route to Zingerman’s and where to park and how to pay for parking. On my third and final trip there, I got the cowboy Reuben, which uses a softer roll, beef brisket, coleslaw instead of sauerkraut, and BBQ sauce instead of Russian dressing. The delicatessen is also a highly regarded grocery store, full of carefully curated and extremely expensive items. The sandwiches are pricey, too. The cowboy Reuben, with a side order and 18% tip, cost nearly $40. Thus I was astounded to find it mainly consisted of the large roll. The coleslaw was not a good substitute for sauerkraut, I thought; too bland. The BBQ sauce was overly sweet. I had tried a sample of brisket over at Ricewood on Packard in the past year and was dazzled by its rich flavor. Whatever that was inside the cowboy Reuben at Zingerman’s, I can scarcely countenance that it was brisket. It was a little flap of mushy, stringy beef that tasted like something you might encounter in beef stew. Not untasty, but not what I was expecting, and there also wasn’t much of it, nor of the other fillings, so this was definitely the most expensive piece of bread I ever ate.

(Zingerman’s, among other things, has a bakehouse where they make really wonderful bread of all sorts. No complaints about the quality of the roll that encased the otherwise unsatisfactory cowboy Reuben.)

Metzger’s, where I went today, is now in a little strip mall near I-94 and Zeeb Rd. It’s full of German memorabilia, including those blue plates of which my mother’s mother had several affixed to her kitchen wall. I had never realized those were German until today. My grandfather was German; his father was born in Germany, but my grandmother was Irish and English, and I had always thought of those as being something to do with her heritage, but I guess they weren’t.

My server was very sweet and the food was fine, nothing special. I will place Metzger’s Reuben above Max’s but several notches below Zingerman’s. The meat did vaguely taste like corned beef. Next week I plan to go to Knight’s and to have the Reuben there, when my father’s high school classmates have their monthly lunch. I’ve had it before, but having had so many other Reubens lately, it will be interesting (at least slightly) to see where it fits in the rankings.

On my way to Zingerman’s or Knight’s, I pass an apartment building on Huron in Ann Arbor once owned by my father’s grandmother. My parents also lived in an apartment there for a bit after they were married and before they bought their first house. They bought the house after they’d been married for two years because they were about to have a baby, which was me. Right across the street from that apartment building is the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, usually just called Rackham. The land it was built on was sold to the University of Michigan by that same great-grandmother of mine, who also ran her husband’s corset factory when he became unable to continue, and she served as the general contractor for a house she had built for herself in a nice neighborhood which now probably goes for two million dollars, though I can’t tell you for sure, because I can’t remember the address off the top of my head, and that’s enough about my forebears for today. My father had deep roots in Ann Arbor. He went to one of the same elementary schools I later attended. (My mother was born in Detroit and lived in Dearborn until she came to Ann Arbor to go to engineering school at the University of Michigan, where she and my father met at a summer job.) (So I guess that wasn’t enough about my forebears for today, after all, but now it is.)

I took I-94 home, which was a hair-raising experience. The Michigander on I-94 in rush hour goes 80 miles an hour even if the car ahead of him is going 50 miles an hour, which I didn’t really have any choice about because the big truck ahead of me was going 50 miles an hour, and what’s the big hurry, anyway?

I had virtuously intended to take a walk after I got home, but it really was miserably cold. I went about half a block and then turned around and came home. It would have been more bearable if I’d had my warm base layer pants on and my fleece-lined flannel shirt, and I guess there was no law stopping me from putting those things on and going back out, but I didn’t. I put in a load of laundry and carried some of my mother’s bins of craft stuff up from the basement and sat on the couch with a comforter over me and read for a while and then passed out on the couch due to my heavy lunch, which besides the sandwich also featured onion rings and German potato pancakes.