The Vitals:
the spot: Knuckle Sandwich 440 E St Elmo Rd, Austin, TX 78745
the eats: All the sandwiches
the bucks: $17
the full nelson: best italian sandwich I’ve ever had
Bold words I know but I was truly floored. Everything Chef Ryan Fox does in making this Italian Sandwich is pure chef flex. He drives to San Antonio to get the bread. The meats he uses are top shelf: Olympia Provisions. He makes a ridiculously genius sauce. There is more to it but the journey to trying the best Italian Sandwich I ever had starts with the journey of this uber talented chef.
Tasting menus? Check. James Beard nomination? Check? Opened a major fine dining restaurant overseas and eventually left because he needed to keep honing his craft? Check. Ryan Fox is first and foremost from Cleveland, a town with a storied food culture and a killer Corned Beef sandwich town too. When I went there to film Cheap Eats, I learned all of this first hand.
He would leave his hometown to study at the Culinary Institute of America in New York. Then he landed a job working with acclaimed Chef Joel Robuchon at L’ Atelier, an over the top tasting menu experience. The gig took him to Singapore to open a location there before leaving to hone his skills in a different direction. He was in Portland most recently where he ran his own tasting menu restaurant and picked up a nomination as a rising star chef by the James Beard Foundation.
Given Fox’s resume, expect a not your average deli menu. I locked eyes on the Italian sandwich aka The Knuckle Sandwich. No regrets but next time I will be trying the Lion’s Mane Pastrami mushroom which Chef seemed very proud of.
Mortadella, Salami and Capicola make up the full rundown of the meats line up for this exquisite Italian sandwich. I love mortadella and if you do too, you will enjoy the offering by Olympia Provision. The shrettuce is there for texture and rather than rolling with a standard slice of cheese, fried Parmesan is offered.
The bread, from Pullman market in San Antonio is shockingly light. The chia seed crust struck me as unconventional but frankly kinda rad. the Za’atar vinaigrette is chef flex but it pales in comparison to the Amba(spicy pickled mango) aioli. The Amba aioli made the meal.
Epic Italian sandwiches have that perfect sauce: typically a combo of mayo, mustard and a vinaigrette that one hopes ends up balanced on the sandwich. Fox takes the next step by balancing all those elements in a house made aioli. So much effort goes into this sandwich, it easily justifies the $17 price tag, given the prices one finds in Austin these days. This Italian sandwich is a total banger.
[…] details in my post here but for now I’ll say this: it is worth the $17. Dude drives to San Antonio every day for the […]