Roast Sandwich House drops ball on salad
At Roast Sandwich House in Melville, a turkey Cobb salad is served with buttermilk-Southwest dressing, June 23, 2014. Credit: Newsday / Erica Marcus
Roast Sandwich House made a splash when it opened in late 2010. The Route 110 corridor in Melville is well served by delis, but Roast distinguished itself by roasting all its meats in-house and generally upping the local sandwich game.
I’ve enjoyed many Roast sandwiches over the last three years, so perhaps I should have stuck with the program. Instead, I tried a salad earlier in the week. There were a number of problems with my Cobb salad ($8.99), starting with the fact that it featured cheddar instead of blue cheese and the cheddar looked pre-shredded. There was no avocado. The tomatoes weren't ripe. My antipathy toward mesclun has been noted many times on this blog; really, a Cobb demands romaine.
But the real surprise was the roast turkey. A Cobb is properly made with chunks of roast chicken. I assumed Roast would be giving me chunks of roast turkey. No dice. If the turkey (or turkey breast) had been roasted in-house, it hadn’t been roasted that day. The slicer-thin meat had obviously been portioned into a clump, wrapped up and chilled before being dumped unceremoniously upon the salad.
I'm hoping this was an aberration; Melville needs a Roast at the top of its game.
Roast Sandwich House is at 827 Walt Whitman Rd., Melville; 631-629-4869
