Frank Sabatini Jr. | Restaurant Review
What fits between two hunks of bread?
Depending on where you go, hopefully it’s a whole lot more than ham and Swiss topped with limp lettuce leaves — exactly the kind of soulless sandwich that can send you running to Rubicon Deli for consolation.
As with some of my other favorite Uptown delis like The Big Front Door in North Park and The Deli Llama in Hillcrest, Rubicon avoids all of the no-no’s in sandwich making. Mystery cold cuts don’t enter into the equation. Nor do cheeses that taste exactly alike, or rolls that until recently harbored chemicals used in rubber. I need not name the big-chain offenders except to say that Jersey Mike’s isn’t one of them.
Since Rubicon’s founding in 1993, the Nevada-based eatery has branched into two San Diego locations — in Mission Beach and Mission Hills. Retaining its mom-and-pop soul, the company is known for layering fresh ingredients into whole loaves of house-baked bread that includes everything from Dutch crumb and garlic-cheese to jalapeno-Jack, wheat, pesto and more.
The airy loaves are substantial in size, although all of the signature and build-your-own sandwiches are available in half portions. Those, too, are rather hefty.
A fellow sandwich hound and I visited the Mission Hills location, an elongated space with three sets of doors that lead either to the order counter, the cash register or the nicely designed dining area furnished with red booths and a lengthy communal table. The storefront’s left entranceway is where you should begin.
Every sandwich deserves a salad, so we started with the “twisted Caesar,” which captured pieces of perfectly cooked bacon that tasted as though they came directly from a fry pan. Moist sun-dried tomatoes and slivers of Asiago cheese were also strewn throughout the chilled romaine, making it one of the zestiest Caesars I’ve had in a while.
We ordered four different sandwiches in half form, each of them split in two for easy sharing. For the spicy tuna stacked with avocado, chopped pickles, tomatoes and onions, we matched it to jalapeno-Jack bread for extra kick. The tuna salad inside was excellent. It’s speckled with minced carrots and herbs. Habanero mustard is what ultimately lends heat to the sandwich.
Pastrami and tri-tips are roasted in-house. The former is paired in true New York style to Swiss cheese, coleslaw and stone-ground mustard in what the menu calls the “dom pastram.” I chose wheat bread thinking that it would interact neutrally with the well-spiced, thinly sliced meat inside. But its wheaty flavor turned out to be a weird match. My bad.
The “dapper dipper” highlighting juicy, chipped tri-tip is simple and superb, basically a classic French dip with Swiss cheese and robust horseradish accompanied by a bowl of somewhat salty au jus. The Dutch-crumb roll we assigned to it was perfect, although I’d bet that Rubicon’s bleu cheese bread qualifies as a sensational fit.
We had high hopes for the “Rubicon special” sandwich constructed with turkey, smoked Gouda, roasted red peppers, lettuce and pesto mayo. The ingredients were fresh and plentiful, but the outcome tasted a little bland, despite our choice of garlic-cheese bread. Perhaps a higher dose of pesto in the light-green mayo would have helped.
Additional sandwich choices include the “whale’s veg” with kale and other organics accented with hummus, tarragon-Dijon and balsamic vinaigrette. The “crandie” combines turkey, Provolone, balsamic mayo and cranberry mustard while the “mozza bella” blankets herbed chicken breast with asparagus, roasted tomatoes, kalamata olives, raw basil and fresh mozzarella.
Petite house-baked chocolate chip cookies are included with meal orders, a pleasant amenity that sweetens the palate after blitzing it with creative ingredient combinations that make these wholesome sandwiches a savory cut above most others.
