Ink Sack Menu
Bahn Mi Sandwich -Pork butt, pork belly, chicharrones and pickled veggies
Close up of the Bahn Mi
Pastrami – Short rib pastrami, horseradish cream sauce, Dijon and Swiss cheese
Maryland Crab Chips
Maryland Crab Chips for the car ride back to the West side
Mexican Chocolate Chip Cookie on the counter at Ink Sack
Upon attempting to go to the Urban Outfitters sample sale and seeing a line around the block in the pouring rain, my friend Heather and I quickly gave up our dreams for buying cheap clothes and decided to drive back to work. Feeling dejected for having driven across town in Friday rainy traffic we wanted to make the most of our sacrifice. We passed Ink Sack on our way home and promptly “flipped a bitch” in the middle of Melrose after seeing that there was no line at Ink Sack.
The interior of Ink Sack is simple and is standing room only with a chalkboard menu and a chain link fence separating the kitchen from the register. The sandwiches were innovative and exciting, I wish I could have ordered one of everything on the menu. The prices are amazing for a Top Chef restaurant which is great because it makes the food of Top Chef winner Michael Voltaggio accessible to the general public without a reservation. The sandwich prices range from $4 to $7 with sides ranging from $3 to $7. With so many choices we asked and ordered the most popular and newest sandwiches, the Bahn Mi and the Pastrami respectively.
The bread is home made and extremely crunchy, flakey, chewy and soft all at the same time. The Banh Mi, a traditional Vietnamese sandwich, contained pork butt, pork belly, chicharrones and pickled veggies. The light picked veggies were the perfect contrast to the heavy meat. While I would have preferred them more evenly spread throughout the sandwich, the sandwiches are on the smaller side and I was able to handle this task myself (tough life, I know).
The pastrami was the perfect sandwich on a rainy day like Friday. The bread and the meat were warm and the horseradish helped clear out my runny nose (TMI?) The sandwich was a perfect blend of short rib pastrami, horseradish cream sauce, Dijon and Swiss cheese. The warm meat helped to tone town the bitterness of the horseradish leaving only the best of the flavor. It oozed out the sides and I was able to dip the sandwich in the excess sauce.
After Heather and I finished our sandwiches we decided to try the Maryland Crab potato chips and the Mexican chocolate cookie. Upon first bite of our potato chips (which do not contain crab) we quickly kicked ourselves after realizing that the chips would have gone perfectly with the ‘wiches. They were large, thin, flaky potato chips sprinkled with seasoned salt and what we guessed to be cayenne because they also had a nice a little kick at the end.
The Mexican chocolate cookie wasn’t too sweet it had all the elements of a great cookie. The center was doughy and the outside was crunchy and in the middle were tons of HUUUUGE chunks of Mexican chocolate which on the bitter sweet scale is a little more bitter than it is sweet. A perfect close to the meal.
Ink Sack is great for a quick perfectly sized sandwich, filled with original ingredients, from a Top Chef! Definite Two Forks Up for this one!
