Breakfast Sandwich #157 - Full Mile Beer Company & Kitchen aka Sausage Talk & The Good Ol' Days

Sandwich: Buttermilk Biscuit Sando
Location: Full Mile Beer Company & Kitchen
Date: March 8, 2020
Cost: $11, with mixed greens

A coworker tipped me off to the Full Mile Breakfast Sando (sic). I'd been there previously, but not for brunch. I'm not sure if I knew they had brunch. 

The thing that grabbed my attention when she sent me a photo of the menu was "house-made breakfast sausage". When I first started this project I was often faced with the choice of bacon or sausage, and I usually asked if the sausage was made in house. The answer was always "no", or a long pause and puzzled look on the face of the sever, which is also "no". I've got a good nose for knowing no's. I quickly learned that if a place doesn't clearly tout its homemade sausage, it's not making sausage. I was disappointed to find out how rare it was for places to make their own sausage but rather than ask follow up questions about where the sausage came from I defaulted to bacon. You don't really want to know how the sausage is made, everybody knows that. 

Looking back through my old reviews there aren't very many sausage sandwiches and most of them are McDonald's or some variation of mass-produced foodstuffs. There's a turkey sausage and a lamb sausage and a couple of regular sausage sandwiches but I'm not sure which had house-made sausage, if any. The lamb sausage was probably made in house.

I don't know why I got all hung up on house-made sausage, nobody talks about their house-made bacon and I order that without hesitation. Actually, I know why - it's because you can tweak your sausage with more fennel or whatever so you have a signature blend. It signals "I've gone to great lengths to make my pig fat taste different", which is worthy of investigation. I am aware that a handful of places make their own bacon but I've frittered away enough of your time so let's not go down that path today.

Which brings us to the present day (or at least March 8). Let it be known that March 8 was the last time I was able to go out for a breakfast sandwich before we started hunkering down in our cacoon-bunkers and making pillows out of disinfectant wipes or whatever people are doing these days.

Technically the Breakfast Burger is also a breakfast sandwich but it never really feels like it. Anyway, I didn't drive to Sun Prairie to NOT order the house-made sausage.

Sometimes there is a lot of natural light and I accidentally take an OK photo.

Everybody knows that when you cut a biscuit in half it's going to start falling apart.

The Sandwich - Buttermilk Biscuit Sando. I need to say that I don't like the word "Sando". That's all. There are no choices offered on this sandwich, the name tells you everything you need to know about the bread you're getting and the menu description fills in the rest. 

I was worried about the scrambled egg = no runny yolk. I'm pretty much always worried about that but when I saw the ample dollop of harissa mayo sneaking out from under the biscuit my fears were assuaged. 

Yes, the harissa mayo added a healthy amount of viscosity and a little heat and flavor. This sandwich had balance - the biscuit was flaky and a bit crumbly, but held together. The sausage had an individualistic flavor to it that I couldn't pinpoint and maybe I was fooling myself because I knew it was house-made but it matched well with the tomato and arugula. 

Let me be honest here for a minute. I don't think there is any need for me to jabber on about this sandwich. It was a DAMN. FINE. SANDWICH. It was a refreshing twist on a classic breakfast sandwich and I think we need that from time to time. 

The Bloody Mary and Awesome Sound sidecar (that's one of their beers) were also fantastic.

The Result - 4.75 Less Virus More Sandwiches out of 5 Less Virus More Sandwiches. I think I already said enough about the sandwich, right? I forgot to talk about the cheese though. And the side of greens. Good, that adds an air of mystery to the whole thing.

We can't go out for sandwiches right now. I guess you can pick them up from some places and take them home to your safe place, but it's not the same. Maybe you can get takeout from Full Mile, I don't know.

This is a warning that perhaps the next 10 reviews will be Lab Reports which will likely be poorly received because I hope you're all at home making your own sandwiches and why would you need to hear about mine? Who knows what will happen? If shit really goes off the rails I'll be making possum sausage and reporting on that. I've seen that fat fucker lurking around by my shed and if he/she thinks I won't eat it, they are wrong! I haven't yet figured out which people in my neighborhood would be best to cannibalize, but it's probably the children, right? I'd be doing everybody a favor. 

Oh, relax, my neighbors don't read this junk.

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Breakfast Sandwich #116 - Mint Mark aka Flavor Piñata

Sandwich: Chimera
Location: Mint Mark
Date: April 20, 2018
Cost: $8

Within a few of weeks of Mint Mark opening it's doors I was receiving tips/demands that I try their breakfast sandwiches. Most recommended the Chimera although the Sunday Morning (not available on Sundays) also had it's supporters. 

While I'd been there for drinks and a few small plates from the dinner menu I had yet to make it for breakfast. The breakfast menu is only available Monday through Friday and it's rare that I go out for a breakfast sandwich during the work week unless it's a grab-n-go type of a deal. 

It was only a matter of time and on this morning I felt the call of the sandwich shortly after waking. You know exactly what I'm talking about. If you don't, I can't describe it but you might need to slather some mustard on your condiment chakras. I don't know. I'm not a doctor or a medicine man or a lawyer or even an escalator.  

Some day there will be an exhibit of my crappy menu photos at the Photography Hall of Fame and this one will probably be included. 

I sat near the window precisely to get a shot like this. Where does that jalapeño slice think it's going?

I thought cutting this in half would be problematic but I just had to see.

The Sandwich - Chimera. I was in the mood for sausage this day, actually, I was in the mood for this exact sandwich. I knew I was going to get it before I left the house so the Sunday Morning sandwich will just have to wait. (I'm looking forward to it though - a ham breakfast sandwich has to be done right and we have a couple of very solid offerings in Porter and Johnson Public House. The bar has been set.) There are no variations offered upon ordering. The sandwich is an adorable little flaker and won me over as soon as I saw it. The biscuit was crumbly and I feared the worst as I cut it in half for the crucial cross section shot. It actually held together better than I though and SURPRISE - like a potentially salmonella-laced piñata the sandwich unleashed runny yolk. I did not see that coming. What a pleasant surprise. Happy birthday to me. (It was not my birthday.) The jalapeños were milder than expected, as was the sausage. I don't know if the sausage is made in house but it had a lean and smooth texture to it. The cheddar blended well and is the perfect cheese for this sandwich. There are a lot of flavors here that mix well but none are overpowering. The biscuit just barely kept it together and if this had been a larger sandwich I don't think it could have done the job.

The Result - 4.62 Flavor Piñatas out of 5 Flavor Piñatas. There is a lot here to trumpet - flavors and sights and textures - it's a beautiful and delicious sandwich and deserving of the praise that it's supporters sent my way. I did wish that it had a little more kick, not much, just a touch. I kept expecting that little extra nudge, be it the sausage or peppers or dijonaise or some combination of those. It didn't happen. That shouldn't detract from the glory of this sandwich. I'm quibbling about personal preferences at this point but somebody has to do it. 

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Breakfast (For Dinner) Sandwiches #113A & 113B - These Sandwiches Have a Name

Sandwiches - Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit with Arugula and Dijon Mustard
Date: 3/2/18

Earlier this week I joked on a group text about bringing breakfast sandwiches to an event and one of the participants asked for "bacon & cheese biscuit, egg over-medium, with arugula and dijon". Oddly enough I already had all of those items in my fridge so I made a plan to do some work in the lab. Friday I would have breakfast for dinner. How exciting!

Of all the sandwiches I've made in the lab this is the first using biscuits which I now realize has been a horrible oversight. My excuse is that I don't usually keep biscuits around the house, but, I had some leftover from a meal earlier in the week and the lab is for exploring and in this case, filling a blank area on my sandwich palette. To be clear they were the refrigerated kind, I didn't actually bake biscuits. I've always had a affinity for Poppin' Fresh (The Pillsbury Doughboy) and I even had a t-shirt with him on it when I was younger and that's no joke. Poppin' Fresh turns 53 years old in just a couple of weeks - the day after St. Patricks Day! That ticklish little bastard is probably due for a makeover at this point and with a name like Poppin' Fresh I think he's got a bright future as a heavily autotuned rap singer. I want to be in his band and I'm going to tweet this at them as soon as I'm done here and that also is no joke. This is serious stuff.

Biscuits make for pretty pictures.

It was so tasty I had to make another.

The Sandwich - Bacon & Cheese Biscuit, Chicken Egg Over-Medium, with Arugula and Dijon. I took it as a sign when I had all items on hand so I did not stray from the recipe - even on the second sandwich. The one detail that I would have changed is to use an American Single for the cheese, which I didn't have. I used Stone Ridge Marble Cheese - a combo of monterey jack and colby which melted better than I thought it would. You can't tell from the photo but I broke the yolk on the second sandwich trying to fish out a large chunk of shell. As a result there was no runny yolk but I managed to eat it anyway. You can see I cooked the eggs using the puck method. It just makes sense when you're dealing with a round bread such as a biscuit.

The Result - This was a winning combo, indeed. The dijon adds a proper spiciness and blends with the peppery arugula. That, combined with the bacon more than atoned for the somewhat bland cheese choice. The biscuits held up admirably and were perhaps just a little too dense. They weren't as flaky as Pillsbury would have you think and they're a touch on the sweet side. They didn't crumble though and that's crucial. I have dubbed this sandwich the McEvan, named after the original requester. This is what it will be called at my all day breakfast sandwich restaurant that I will never open cause I'll be too busy playing bass on tour with Poppin' Fresh. 

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Guest Review - Ugly Apple Cafe aka A Former Colleague Ate A Sandwich

At the beginning of 2016 one of the goals I set is to have more guest reviewers. I've done little to foment this idea but still like the concept of other voices and taste buds offering their opinions. 

My initial concept of the guest review was to have sandwich eaters join me in breakfast excursions so we could volley witty and insightful comments about bacon and such and then distill them into cohesive reviews on this page. 

That isn't what happened here. 

This review arrived unsolicited and is for a food cart that I had not heard of. The author is a friend and former colleague so while I did not join him on this sandwich mission, I do have some knowledge of his tastes and expectations. 

It would seem that my occasional remarks about guest reviews do not fall on deaf ears (eyeballs?).

Colin said he wrote this as a way to dip his toes into the exciting and mystical world of a food blogger but I think he really just wanted to escape the drudgery of the day to day office life. 

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The use of the word "ugly" as a way of branding your merchandise or services always seems like a dubious ploy, at best. Certainly there are exceptions to this premise. For every Coyote Ugly Saloon or Bumping Uglies, there is an Ugly Kid Joe [Did you know they are still an active band? - Ed.] or Ugly Christmas Sweater, which is an entire industry that caters to the twee concept that "ugly" sweaters are hilarious and ironic. They are neither. 

This raises an interesting point, though: Who is it that determines what constitutes ugly? It was Shakespeare who said "Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye, Not utter'd by base sale of chapmen's tongues" which seems like a fancy way of saying one man's trash is another man's treasure. On the whole, however, I think we can all agree that consumers tend to avoid products or services which evoke unpleasantness. One such place you, dear reader, need not avoid entirely, despite the name, is the Ugly Apple Cafe, though you might want to sample something other than the breakfast sandwich.

Curiously, the Ugly Apple Cafe is neither ugly nor a cafe.  In fact, the Ugly Apple Cafe is a peripatetic cart which serves aesthetically pleasing food. 

The Ugly Apple Food Cart (if I may) aims "To serve a fast and fresh breakfast to Madison, work with local farmers, minimize waste by using their overstock produce, and help Madison's less fortunate get fed." So, instead of one man's trash being another man's treasure, it would appear that one man's overstock produce is another man's breakfast. Here is what is on offer:

Photo stolen from someplace.

You can add (overstocked) meat to your (overstocked) sandwich served on an (overstocked) biscuit for a mere $1.25, which beats the hell out of buying an Ugly Kid Joe cd.  My sandwich looked like this upon arrival back to my office:

Hello. I am a sandwich.

The reviewer did their homework and provided the proper cross section shot. 

The Sandwich -- Chicken egg, sausage, and cheese on a biscuit. I do not share the opinion of the proprietor of this sando-zine that all eggs must be runny to be enjoyed; instead, I think fluffy and fixed-in-place are just lovely. [Ahem. - Ed.] Such was the case with this chicken egg which was bouncy and flavorful and buoyed on the biscuit (for a time, anyway). The cheese (of unknown variety) was melty but offered little in the way of flavor. So, too, with the sausage which did not have anything to recommend it.  Usually you like some sort of pepper or sage or general porkiness in your sausage, but none was on offer with this little puck. I can overlook flavorless cheese or even unremarkable sausage if what holds it together is stupendous but unfortunately this was yet another missed beat. The biscuit was doughy, not flaky, and disintegrated a few bites into each hemisphere. 

The Result -- 1.75 dregs out of 5 dregs. I appreciate the effort that went into buying castoff ingredients and recycling them into a re-purposed breakfast, but this sandwich needed more. Adding some salty cheese and increasing the butter in the biscuit making process would go a long way in improving this sandwich. Otherwise, one man's trash is just that.
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Editors notes. I'd really like to try this sandwich as a way to gauge that rating. On my own scale a 1.75 is reserved for the truly awful, which this doesn't quite sound like.

Breakfast Sandwich #66 - McDonald's aka A Return To The Classics

Sandwich: Sausage Egg Biscuit
Location: McDonald's
Date: September 16, 2016
Cost: $3.18

I reviewed the Egg McMuffin awhile ago and noted at the time that if asked to guess I would have said it comes with sausage on it. It turns out that the classic McMuffin has Canadian bacon on it, not sausage.

Lately I've been wanting for a sausage based breakfast sandwich and although this was probably not the best choice to sate that craving, it was convenient. That's how they get you, right?

"Add Round Egg" sounds funny and more than doubles the cost of the sandwich for reasons I don't understand. Eggs are cheap.

Aesthetically pleasing bag design.

Looks OK, right?

The eye is immediately drawn to that base layer of melted cheese.

The Sandwich - Sausage Egg Biscuit. I guess it's really a Sausage Biscuit and the Egg is an add on, but here is the shocking part - they ask you if you want your egg folded, or round. When did that start? It startled me when she said it and I just stared at the drive thru speaker for a bit and then asked her to repeat the question. "Do you want your egg folded or round?", she repeated, and the tone of her voice had a subtext of "dumbass" in it, which was probably not unfounded. I ordered the round egg because it's more visually appealing, usually it looks like cartoon food. I didn't tell her that part. I'm not sure how much of this sandwich is real food, but it does a pretty good job of posing as real food. The biscuit was alright, a little smooshy, but it didn't crumble apart. The round egg was cartoony and ok, I already knew it wouldn't be runny, and the cheese was nice and melty. The sausage had the exact sausage flavor I was craving. Overall, it was just about exactly what I thought it would be although a little on the salty side. After looking up the nutritional content it turns out it was a lot saltier than I thought, but it didn't taste as such. It has considerably less sodium than the Denny's sandwich I recently had, which isn't saying much.

The Result - 3.50 Better Than You Thinks out of 5 Better Than You Thinks. I intentionally avoided my previous McDonald's review so as not to color my opinion on this one - and now that I look it's the same sandwich, but on a biscuit instead of a muffin. Well, shit. I thought I reviewed the classic McMuffin with Canadian bacon last time. Nope. But, I have rated this sandwich much higher than that one. I can't change it now, that would be intellectually dishonest. I guess the crux of the biscuit is "what a difference a day (or biscuit) can make". Makes sense. Maybe the first time I went to this McDonald's the head chef was on vacation and the sous chef made my sandwich and he was a little hungover. I don't know. This sandwich was pretty good but I had low expectations and I think that helped. It shouldn't be a surprise that it was OK, they've been cranking out these sandwiches by the thousands for several decades.

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Breakfast Sandwich #53 - Bloom Bake Shop aka Good Neighbors

Sandwich: Wisconsin Biscuit Sandwich
Location: Bloom Bake Shop
Date: March 12, 2016
Cost: $7

Bloom Bake Shop was recommended by a couple of people and I had been hoping to get out there for awhile but I was waiting for an opportunity to find myself in Middleton. It was starting to look like that situation wasn't going to present itself so I just went. It's a real journey to get there, 9.7 miles to be exact. By Madison standards that is a long way. This isn't Southern California. I mean, it's another whole town, village, city. Middleton is the "Good Neighbor City".

Before you even get into Bloom, you are greeted with this:

A SANDWICH ON A SANDWICH BOARD! YAAAYYY. Also, it looks like somebody lost a brick. 

That sign is pretty neighborly, you have to admit.

Wall menu.

It looks even better than the one on the sandwich board.

The Sandwich - Wisconsin Biscuit Sandwich. No options offered although by the way it is worded on the menu it seems like the cheese may vary from time to time. I should have asked what was on mine but it was a melty, stringy, white cheese. The sandwich came out nicely stacked and looking all perky on the plate. It really was an attractive sandwich. The chicken egg wasn't cooked runny how I like it but it is apparently local, like everything else on this sandwich. There is a really good chance that they know the name of the chicken that made the eggs. The biscuit is a standout here - flakey and buttery and all those words everybody uses to describe a good biscuit. It wasn't crumbly and held up well. For me, the real secret to this sandwich was the stone ground mustard. I don't know what kind it was but it blended with everything perfectly and was portioned well with a couple of small pockets of extra mustardy goodness tucked into places. Of course the bacon was great.

The Result - 4.91 Good Neighbors out of 5 Good Neighbors. This is an excellent sandwich. Perhaps a little on the pricey side but thats what you get with all those local/free range/GMO Free/organic/freshly-tickled ingredients. Whatever. It's a delicious, simple, standard breakfast sandwich. The basics done as they should be. The shop is comfortable and the service is friendly and excellent. While I was there several people came in for their cakes or cupcakes or whatever they ordered for their parties. I'm guessing the baked items are fantastic and have a reputation unto themselves.

While I was driving out there I considered going to Hubbard Avenue Diner as well, just to get some extra research in. I abandoned that plan as foolish after this sandwich. 

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