Mr. Corned Beef (Jefferson Ave)
11000 E. Jefferson Avenue, Suite BIt’s not very often I get to sent to Detroit for an afternoon gig but that’s what happened late last week.
I was meeting three other co-workers so instead of meeting somewhere and driving in to the city together, I just met them downtown at our work site.
It was a pretty long day. I left Kalamazoo at about 6:30 AM and got done with work about 6:00 PM. We packed up our stuff then headed our separate ways.
I hadn’t eaten much all day. The job site we were at brought in some Little Caesars in the afternoon but I only grabbed a couple of slices. I was still pretty hungry and wanted to eat before I got back on the road to Kalamazoo.
There are still a lot of places in Detroit I want to eat at but I didn’t feel like sitting down for a meal downtown. The Tigers game had just gotten over and there was a Red Wings game later that night….so downtown was pretty packed.
I started Googling sandwich places nearby so I could get something quickly and get something I could eat quickly. A lot of what was coming up was already closed but then, two words caught my attention. Corned Beef.
Mr. Corned Beef is a small chain of sandwich shops in the Detroit metro area. There are two in Detroit itself then locations in Ferndale, Pontiac, and Westland. I was closest to the location on the east side of Detroit on Jefferson Avenue near Lillibridge Street in the Marina District. The restaurant is part of a shopping center anchored by Parkway Foods.
The restaurant is strictly a carry out shop. There’s an order counter that’s completely behind glass. The menu is taped to the inside of the glass wall. There’s a big list of sandwiches to choose from in a few different sizes.
I put in an order for the Mr. Pastrami sandwich on rye with Swiss cheese and mustard. The cost was right around $25 which I paid for on my card.
The guy working said it would take him about ten minutes so I took a seat in one of the chairs lined up along the wall. There was a TV on the opposite wall but it was turned off so there really isn’t much going on in the waiting area. They do have online ordering and most people that came in where just there to pick up sandwiches. I was the only one who walked in to order and was waiting.
A few minutes later, I heard the guy in the kitchen trying to get my attention. The sandwich was put in to a brown paper bag then put in to one of those turntable type windows to be spun around to me. I grabbed the bag then headed back to the car.
The sandwich was huge and a lot more than I felt comfortable eating in the front seat of the car so I took a few bites to hold myself over and decided to get down the road a little ways to a truck stop or someplace before I got out of the car to eat using my hood as a table.
When I finally did pull over to eat, I had no idea how to attack this thing. There were actually three layers of bread with huge layer of thinly sliced pastrami between them. I ended up turning it in to three sandwiches because there no way I could even figure out how to pick this monstrosity up. This wasn’t just a stunt food kind of sandwich with a lot of meat, it was really good meat too. The thin slices of pastrami were perfect. There is just enough of a peppery heat to each slice which is amplified by the tanginess of the mustard.
Mr. Corned Beef was a good choice. I don’t know if all the locations are walk ups like this but I should have looked in to it a little more to see if any of them had seating. Waiting until I got closer to Ann Arbor to eat this was brutal. I could smell it the whole way and I just needed to get to a truck stop so I could get out and eat.
SW Michigan Dining 