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A rainy Sunday, sleep-deprived and ravenous, I headed out with Earle to meet my dad, his wife Bianca, her cousin Cen (pronounced ‘Chen’ – short for Vincenzo) and his wife Kris (possibly spelling that wrong) at the Famous 4th Street Delicatessen.  I hadn’t eaten much in the last 24 hours besides donuts, coffee, and about 6 peanut m&m’s (no joke) so was ready to jump some plates of food.  And as many know, the plates at 4th Street are redonkulously huge.  I have been a couple times before, but ordered modestly:  omelettes and salads.  I scoffed at fools ordering health plates and simple greens – today was a day for MEAT!  As I’ve mentioned a couple times before, meat and I have never been great friends.  I took a risk today.  A risk I think I’ll be paying for throughout the week.  But it was dang worth it.

The six of us waited in line for about 30 minutes, no surprise considering it was right after the Broad Street Run, noshed on strawberry cheesecake samples and basically ogled the dessert case to no end.  Once seated, dad extolled on the merits of a simple McDonald’s hamburger, even going so far as to praise the filet o’fish, that wicked stepchild.  And when we all scoffed at his romanticisms, he informed us that McDonald’s partnered with Hilton to create the fish sandwich’s tartar sauce, which he said is absolutely delish.  Oh how we laughed and laughed (at him).  There was the obligatory riffing on swine flu, complete with Paris Hilton’s recent quote about the pandemic.  Then the food arrived, and honestly, I don’t remember much after that.

My corned beef reuben…I was only able to tackle half of the first half.

Money shot:  my corned beef.

Earle’s pastrami reuben.  He fared a little better than I.

Earle’s reuben is ready for its close up.

And then there’s what everybody else ate.  And someone in our party joined the Clean Plate Club…

Kris’ delicatessen omelette:  pastrami, corned beef, some kind of salami, and cheddar.  Side of potato pancakes.  It looked fantastic.

Dad’s whitefish salad on an everything bagel with extra onion and macaroni salad on the side.  The whitefish was tasty, not fishy, and not too salty.

I want to go to there.

Dad’s “side” of corned beef hash. Trust me, there’s a regular-sized option as well. When he dumped this in his large to-go container, it filled the entire thing.  (And was still piping hot.)

So salty and crispy and good, but totally unnecessary in the grand scheme of things.

Ok, so then there was Cen.  He ordered the Flatbush Ave: turkey, corned beef, pastrami, cole slaw, russian dressing. He said hell no to the cole slaw and russian because he likes mustard on his sangwich. When he cockily declared he was “going for it” I just figured he was out of his league. Boy was I wrong:

Last bite.

Boo-ya.

We had some complimentary mini chocolate chip cookies too, and Bianca bought us a massive black and white cookie.  Tomorrow will be a good day for fruit and a Kashi bar.  And nothing else.  (Unfortunately no pics of Bianca’s meal because we had practically the same thing.)