Today's Lunch: Homefront Deli

The office where I work is in this weird food zone. Lots of mega-delis making sandwiches with pre-sliced meat, overpriced (but tasty) chains (I'm looking at you Pret-A-Manger)and high-end go-with-an-expense-account or a-friend-with-an-expense-account restaurants. Not a lot of other options. I frequently get some sort of Japanese on the strip of 41st St, between Madison and 5th, but I think I've overdone it because lately all I'm craving are sandwiches of the non-Asian persuasion. My favorite place to get such sandwiches is the Homefront Deli.

I finally pulled the trigger on the Homefront Deli a few weeks ago. The neon oaktag squares taped onto the front window, on which the specials and specialties were hand written have always intrigued me but I stayed away without any sort of reasonable explanation. I started with an egg sandwich one morning. It was exactly what I wanted - which is one egg with bacon on a squishy roll with black pepper and hot sauce. I feel like most delis really overdo it with the egg. When I order one egg, I just want one egg. Even better, give me a fried egg! I eventually made the leap to lunch, where I started with a cheeseburger and onion rings. The burger was a fine deli/diner burger and the onion rings were awesome in that Burger King onion ring sort of way, which is totally a compliment in my book.

I've also had the grilled chicken over feta salad, which is what I wanted today, only the cold line was four times as long as the hot line, so I opted for something from the grill instead. I got the grilled chicken with lettuce, tomato and steak sauce on a roll. They also threw in some super thinly sliced onions, which normally would have offended me and also given me a headache. I took most of them off, but left a couple rings on for extra flavor. Usually when onions are sliced really thin, they don't bother me. The sandwich was solid, but the fries I ordered to accompany were not. They were disappointingly undercooked and soggy. I picked out about 6 fries that had some sort of crispness to them and threw out the rest. Next time I'll ask for them well done.