Pinkus McBride Market & Deli

In a word: Convenience, for some.

The specs: #0482  
Address, hours & details via Isthmus; reviews at Yelp and Isthmus.

JM ate the salisbury steak dinner.
Nichole ate the burning down the house sandwich and West African vegetable soup with couscous.
We also got half a gallon of milk, some Reeses Peanut Butter Cup minis, and a container of Puppy Chow.
The bill was $19.67, or $9.84/person.
JM and Nichole both gave Pinkus McBride Market & Deli a B+ (see our grading rubric).

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Poor planning struck us again - we arrived at Pinkus McBride Market & Deli at 7:01, just as the deli crew were clocking out. We missed out on the hot sandwiches, but luckily there were options in the take-home case. So we did a little grocery shopping and headed home to eat, noshing on Puppy Chow Chex mix all the way.

JM's Salisbury steak with garlic mashed potatoes reheated well. The meat seemed to be machine-molded but had bits of onion to add texture and flavor. The potatoes benefited from a nice goopy gravy. Salisbury steak (like peach cobbler) reminds JM of so many TV dinners and this one lived up to that standard, though it was not anything more gourmet than Swanson.

The cleverly-named Burning Down the House sandwich went in the next day's lunch. Even then, the combination of Boar's Head sliced blazing buffalo chicken, sausalito turkey, pepper jack, jalapenos, and 3-pepper hummus held up well. The ratio of French bread to filling was too much on the bready side, but otherwise, it was a fine sandwich.

Back to dinner: the West African vegetable soup was hearty and lived up to the label: "a comforting fall soup of sweet onion, garlic, chicken broth, sweet potatoes, diced tomatoes, spinach, raisins, chickpeas and spices." It was more a stew than a soup, with a scoop of fluffy yellow couscous that ingeniously served as a spill buffer under the carryout lid and as a bed of carbs once the dish was tipped into crockery.

This very walkable neighborhood deli is a gem, and our only real qualm with it as a restaurant is that it's carryout only. Next time there's a do in James Madison park, pay Pinkus a visit.

Comments

[kurt]

best part about pinkus IMHO is going in on a saturday morning and eavesdropping on stories the undergrads tell about friday night. it's like a "texting last night" but done verbally. Good times.

I used to buy lots of beer and cigarettes there... seemingly from a different lifetime. Nice to learn about the food!