It’s the most popular sandwich at Salty Tongue where they cook their own meats and meat loaf
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Erin Heather presents meat loaf sandwich at the Salty Tongue in Gastown. Photograph by : Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun
Sean Heather opens restaurants like a man possessed. Let me see. There’s Irish Heather, Shebeen, Salt, Limerick Junction and Salty Tongue Deli, all in Gastown. Another is in the offing later this fall just a little further east in ungentrified territory.
I went to Salty Tongue recently for lunch with a colleague — about time, you’d think, considering it’s a quick walk from my office and it’s been open for four years. We got in the lineup, which forms quickly around the noon hour.
Salty Tongue has a straight-ahead menu of sandwiches, soups, salads, wild mushroom mac and cheese and lamb shepherd’s pie. If you have a large capacity stomach, you might find room for wife Erin’s big cookies. (We brought a couple back to the office and the cookies quickly disappeared into surrounding maws.)
The mac and cheese has a surprise mix of cheeses. “Erin makes it with the ends of our cheeses and you never know what kind is in it. They could be very expensive cheeses.”
There’s only one way for lunch spots to have people queued up for sandwiches every day and that is to provide good quality everything at a decent price. And you do get that at Salty Tongue. They cook their own turkey, ham, beef and meat loaf and the bread is from Terra Breads.
“The most popular sandwich is the meat loaf,” says Heather. “Just ask for ‘meat loaf, fill your boots’. It’s an Irish expression meaning ‘the works’.”
Sandwiches cost around $6. If you add soup and salad, it’ll be about $8.50 — but that would definitely fill your boots. If you opt for the spinach salad, you’ll find it doesn’t stint. It’s got pine nuts and goat cheese like a high end salad.
Earlier in the a.m., you might try the egg crepe with Belfast ham, red onions, green pepper, cheddar and mustard. The construction workers around Gastown seem to appreciate it.
Restaurant visits are conducted anonymously and interviews are done by phone. Restaurants are rated out of five stars.
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SALTY TONGUE
213 Carrall St., 604-915-7258.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
