SETH: Chef.

ANDREW: Hey, how are you?

SETH: Doing pretty well.

Good to see you.

ANDREW: Good to see you.

SETH: I'm excited to be here 'cause I love sandwiches.

And what is it that we're looking at right here?

ANDREW: So this is our black Angus strip loin.

We use this for our signature sandwich called The Fight Club.

So it's like a riff on a club sandwich.

SETH: The Fight Club.

And so this is a roast beef club.

ANDREW: Yeah, so we roast our beef in house.

Most people will use like a top round.

We prefer to us a strip loin, a little bit more tender, a little bit more marbling.

SETH: Yeah, 'cause I think of roast beef usually being uh, fairly lean, but I can see there's a lot of nice fat on the top of this.

ANDREW: Exactly.

So I like to break it down into a little bit smaller portions.

And then this will give us a good look at our marbling.

SETH: Oh, yeah.

That's a a really, that's a really pretty cut right there.

ANDREW: Nice, nice piece of steak right there.

So we have this sinew back here.

So I'm gonna trim that off first.

And that's just gonna be tough when you roast it.

And then we have this kind of back fat down here.

So I'm gonna take that off as well.

And then I'll split it one more time.

And this one doesn't have a ton of fat on the top of it.

So here you can kind of see... SETH: And that nice little... ANDREW: What I'm talking about.

SETH: Nice little fat cap.

ANDREW: Nice fat cap, nothing crazy, so I don't think we need to trim too much of this off.

Same idea here, trim that off.

Trim this tendon, and then we'll split this one as well.

SETH: Four beautiful cuts of meat to work with right here.

ANDREW: Yes sir.

SETH: So what do you season this with?

ANDREW: We season it up... We have a nice little fenugreek mixture here.

So we're just gonna give these a nice hearty rubdown.

It's got some basil, thyme, rosemary, salt, black pepper, chili flake, and some fenugreek in there, which is a really fun seasoning I think people underutilize.

So now that we've seasoned this one up, we're gonna take this in the kitchen, give it a nice hard sear in some oil in a big skillet.

Then we're gonna roast it in the oven just until it's about medium, medium rare.

Were gonna let it rest so that all the juices can stay inside of there.

And then once it's chilled, we're gonna slice it up real thin for our sandwiches and then portion them out.

SETH: All right so chef, we get to make some sandwiches now?

ANDREW: Hell yeah.

And this is our roast beef all cooled and sliced.

Do you wanna try a piece?

SETH: Mmm.

You're right, that is not dried out, unlike some of the roast beef I've had before.

And fenugreek, is that the flavor you mentioned?

ANDREW: Yeah, fenugreek is one of the main ones in there.

SETH: Way to go with an underutilized ingredient.

ANDREW: Thank you, yeah.

SETH: I like that.

ANDREW: Thank you.

SETH: So how do you put the whole fight club together?

ANDREW: Sure, so first we start with our bread and we're gonna heat up our bacon.

We keep our roast beef cold.

So we're just gonna throw the bacon on the flat top over here just to kind of warm it up.

And then we butter the bread.

We got one of these fancy little turner things here.

SETH: Yeah, I like that you're using white bread, you know.

There's a place for multi-grain bread out there in the world...

But a nice comforting sandwich sometimes you just have to do that on white bread.

ANDREW: Yeah, I always say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

We get it from a local bakery.

They call it Vienna white loaf.

Um, so it's light, airy, has a nice, uh flavor to it.

So then were just looking for a nice searing like that.

For some of our other sandwiches we make a house made black pepper bacon, but for this one we want something that doesn't overpower or over-shine the uh, roast beef.

SETH: That bacon is smelling mighty good, Chef.

ANDREW: Yeah.

This is probably more than we need, but hey... SETH: Let's put a few extra in.

ANDREW: Yeah.

SETH: Let's load it up.

ANDREW: The first this we're gonna do is we're gonna use our uh, brown butter mayonnaise.

So, uh, traditional mayonnaise are obviously, egg yolk, some acid and oil.

In this case we use brown butter, egg yolks, a little lemon and black pepper in here.

Um, so we're gonna evenly coat- SETH: You'll still get, you'll still get that acidity too.

ANDREW: Exactly and it just gives it a little bit more nuttiness, a little more richness.

And so with any sandwich, every bite should be the same.

We wanna make sure that we cover the bread evenly.

And you can see this is kind of melting a little bit.

SETH: This is kind of just reminding me of childhood right here.

Just spreading lots of butter on a piece of toasted white bread.

ANDREW: Exactly, that's the best.

Next we're gonna load up our roast beef here, nice even distribution.

Again, we wanna make sure that every bite is the same.

SETH: And why do you want every bite to be the same?

ANDREW: Well then you don't get stuck with just bread and lettuce nobody wants that.

Uh, I mean, not that bacon and lettuce would be the end of the world, but, you know.

SETH: A little bit of roast beef in every bite.

ANDREW: Yeah, and then we're gonna lay our bacon across, again, even distribution.

Uh, next, we got, um, some roasted tomatoes.

So they're roasted in a little olive oil, uh, salt, pepper, and garlic.

This is like a little twist on the traditional club sandwich.

You would have just like, some sliced tomatoes.

So I'm gonna add those.

SETH: I'm just glad they're not sun-dried tomatoes.

ANDREW: No.

No, not sun-dried.

Don't have that capability.

SETH: Anything, anything but... ANDREW: And then we have “shrettuce”, so just shredded iceberg lettuce.

SETH: “Shrettuce”.

ANDREW: This is gonna add like a nice texture as well, some nice crispness.

It's like basically a glass of water at the end of the day, but, you know.

SETH: Iceberg lettuce and white bread to compliment this uh, artisan roast beef, however.

ANDREW: You got it, yeah, exactly.

And we'll just cut it straight down the middle.

SETH: All right, I'm not gonna lie, that is a beautiful sandwich right there.

ANDREW: Thank you.

You ready to eat?

SETH: Let's do it.

Chef, this look terrific.

ANDREW: Thank you.

SETH: I'm just gonna dig in here.

ANDREW: Yeah, do it up.

SETH: Right on, man.

That's just awesome.

So you're getting all those different textures with the crispiness of the lettuce, the crunch of the bread, also the acid from the tomatoes.

That's a really nicely balanced sandwich.

ANDREW: Thank you.

Yeah, and the mayonnaise gives it a nice almost like, dressing appeal to it.

SETH: There's just something so nice about a great sandwich (laughing).

What can I say?

ANDREW: There is.

SETH: And chef, what are we drinking here?

ANDREW: Um, so here at Fight Club, we actually have a uh, draft cocktail program.

Um, so in front of you is our sad boy's tea.

It's gonna be a vodka based passion fruit and Earl Grey tea, with a mint syrup.

Then over here we have a Sandia.

So it's um, watermelon juice, mezcal, lime, salt rim.

SETH: All right, that sounds awesome.

ANDREW: Yeah, here at Fight Club, we try to lean into more of the uh, spirits of agave, rum, so, mezcal, tequila heavy and lots of different rums, making the drinks a little bit lighter and a little bit more, uh, summer forward.

SETH: A little bit fun, all right.

ANDREW: Yup.

SETH: It's summer all year long.

ANDREW: Summer all year long.

SETH: I like that.

As somebody who has a bunch of fine dining restaurants, is it fun sometimes just to kind of get into this kitchen and just start making sandwiches?

ANDREW: Yeah, I mean, sandwiches are great for me, especially as an adult.

It's just something fun.

You can kind of throw the chef coat off and then just be a little fat kid with everything you make.

SETH: You know, I don't like to talk about COVID a lot in this show for obvious reasons, but for you guys, it sort of was an opportunity, too, right?

ANDREW: For sure, yeah, during the pandemic, we saw a lot of to go orders for sandwiches, so we pivoted, decided to try out Fight Club.

And we was a huge success with that with the neighborhood supporting us.

SETH: Yeah, everybody need to find something to hold on to, a little bit of nostalgia, something from their past... ANDREW: Exactly.

SETH: You know, during uncertain times.

Well you picked something good.

And I will say, there're a lot of trendy sandwiches out there.

I don't know if the club sandwich is one of them.

So I really appreciate you guys kind of giving a classic sandwich it's due.

This was just wonderful.

ANDREW: Thank you.

SETH: Thanks chef.