Deli Dinner and Rainy Shakespeare

Brown Bag Deli
July 9, 2011
7ish pm

The Brown Bag Deli had been on my list of places to try for quite a few years.  However, German Village isn't very close to where we live and the visit just hadn't happened yet.  However, when they had a Groupon deal I decided I had to give them a try.

Since German Village isn't a hop, skip, and a jump away for us we wanted to tie dinner into doing something else fun downtown.  We had also always wanted to see a Shakespeare in the Park production at Schiller Park, so we decided to put these two together for a summer evening out and I highly suggest you do the same!

Brown Bag is super close to Schiller Park so we were able to park for dinner and then grab our blankets and walk over to the park after we were finished eating.  How convenient.  You could also get Brown Bag to go and have a picnic while you enjoyed the play.  However, I was too hungry to wait so we opted to eat in.

The Brown Bag is the neighborhood deli everyone wishes they had down the street from their home.  Their menu hosts a slew of deli sandwiches, salads, and soups.  But the chef also creates daily specials that are fresh and generally sound out of his world.  Just a few of the most current specials have included mini turkey meatloaves with garlic Parmesan smashed potatoes, shrimp and crab lasagna with homemade sauce, and watermelon cucumber gazpacho.  Yum!

The place is casual and seating is communal. 

When we were in we were in the mood for typical sandwiches and chips.  I selected the #1 on Ten which was composed of 7 (yes 7) layers of turkey, Russian dressing, and coleslaw on 9-grain bread.  The Russian dressing dripping down through the coleslaw and mingling the Russian and slaw dressing flavors together were what made the sandwich. 

Erik went with the classic Brown Bag Sub which was composed of pastrami, ham, salami, cappacola, Swiss cheese, hot pepper cheese, hot peppers, onion, lettuce, tomato, mayo, and Italian dressing.  Whoo that's a lot of ingredients!  He reported that it was what you would expect out of a sub flavor wise and the meats and bread were of very high quality.  He was pleased. 

We also got the Route 11 sweet potato chips and the pesto and parmesan Dirty Potao chips to share.  The sweet potato chips were great and reminded me of the Terra brand.  Unfortunately, the Dirty chips were not as good.  You could taste the pesto flavor, which was unique, but it had a bit of an artificial flavor that I didn't care for. 

We washed all this down with Dr. Brown's black cherry soda and then headed over to relax on the lawn at Schiller Park and enjoy some theatre.  Much Ado About Nothing was the production of the day.  Unfortunately, a summer storm kicked up almost halfway through the show and we had to abandon ship.  However, that didn't stop us from having an enjoyable and memorable evening that I would love to turn into a yearly summer tradition (minus the storm, of course)!

Bill Total:  $13 with a $5 off Groupon
Overall Rating:  4 buckeyes