Sandwich Lab: Of New Sandwiches and Menu Revisions

Beginning Monday, January 30th 2023, we’re adding three brand new sandwiches to our menu, moving a couple of sandwiches to the Secret Menu, and making a small improvement to a Smokehaus classic! By the conclusion of this blog post, we hope you’ll be thoroughly informed of these updates. The Secret Menu sandwiches aren’t going away entirely, they’re just going to be hidden, and at the end of this blog post, we’ll provide instructions for how to find them.

Blog post too long? Don’t feel like reading? Here’s a quick breakdown of key sections:

• New Sandwich Introductions: The Club-Mariner, mmMmm, and The Sunday Sushi

• Sandwich Update: The Gorilla

• Menu reconfigurations/Secret Menu: Big Dipper/Squealy Dan, The ‘06/The Phoebe

Onward to new sandwiches!

Back in November, we held our occasional Sandwich Lab training and menu development session. Six members of our staff each submitted a sandwich for peer review, and of those six contenders, the three highest rated sandwiches—based on Taste, Use of Ingredients, how the sandwich Highlights NWS, and the sandwich’s Feasibility—earned a spot on our menu: The Club-Mariner, mmMmm, and The Sunday Sushi.

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Introducing: The Club-Mariner

A club sandwich like you’ve never seen before! An homage to the Golden Age of comic books in what may be the Golden Age of sandwiches!

The Club-Mariner combines the flavor of land and sea, featuring the opulent pairing of Traditional Smoked Atlantic Salmon and crispy Smoked Pancetta, dressed with sweet hausmade quick pickles, lettuce, and a kiss of wasabi mayo on two slices of toasted white bread.

The Club-Mariner was the highest-rated sandwich at Sandwich Lab, and was developed by our in-haus graphic designer, newsletter writer, social media coordinator, and all-around cool dude, Zac.

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Introducing: mmMmm

(stylized as “mmMmm”)

If you’re wondering how to pronounce the name of this sandwich, just imagine yourself taking the first bite: Maple-sage Smoked Turkey, massaged with Sriracha & Hoisin, then toasted, sits atop a mayo-spackled hero roll, and is further dressed with thinly-sliced cabbage, red onion, pickled ginger, and cilantro. The sweet and spicy flavors dance on your taste buds, as the wave of umami pulses to a rhythm only you can feel. You can’t help but to proclaim, almost in song*, “mmMmm!” You might’ve wanted to say more, but your mouth is full and you do not want to rush this bite.

Deli manager and chief goofball Leif developed and pitched mmMmm to the Lab.

*That’s a glissando’d octave up and down of B, for any readers with perfect pitch, or any sort of musical background. Trust us, we tested it.

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Introducing: The Sunday Sushi

Another umami-bomb joins our menu, especially tailored to the “not too spicy” crowd! The Sunday Sushi doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s the first time a sandwich of its sort has appeared on our menu. The Sunday Sushi takes a classic Midwestern hors d'oeuvre, oftentimes nicknamed “Lutheran Sushi”, as its influence—savory sliced Smoked Berkshire Ham, brushed with scallion cream cheese, and wrapped around a dill pickle spear—deconstructs it, adds sliced cabbage, and puts it on a hero roll. This combination has graced many a Smokehaus sample tray and employee snack session, and now it’s available for your everyday nutritional needs!

Michael, our Mail Order Director and in-haus music festival aficionado, finally codified The Sunday Sushi into sandwich law before the council.

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Introducing: The (Improved) Gorilla

When Eric Goerdt speaks, we listen. And not just because he’s our boss, but also because he’s a rare intellect, a wellspring of knowledge and insight about food and life. So, when Eric said “The Gorilla should have pickles,” we listened. 

Henceforth, dear reader, The Gorilla will include sliced dill pickles as a base ingredient!

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In order to make room on our paper menus for The Club-Mariner, mmMmm, and The Sunday Sushi, we’ve folded two of our sandwiches into similar offerings. Say (sort of) goodbye to The Squealy Dan and The Phoebe! Before we explain the changes, please know that over the phone and at our ordering window, you’ll still be able to order both of these sandwiches by their original names! The changes will mostly affect your online ordering experience, or a newcomer’s navigation of our paper menus. We understand that this may cause some minor headaches, but rest assured, our staff is prepared to help you navigate the reconfigured menu.

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Reintroducing: The Squealy Dan has become a variant of The Big Dipper!

The Squealy Dan aka The Ol’ Standby aka The Smokehaus Staff’s Favorite Morale Sandwich bears such a strong resemblance to The Big Dipper that it’s only natural to combine them.

•The (new) Big Dipper has meat options: choose from Porketta, Smoked Pork Loin, or dry-cured Salami Mix.

•The (new) Big Dipper still comes with zesty three-pepper dipping sauce. This is an improvement over The (old) Squealy Dan, which notably did not include dipping sauce.

How to make your Big Dipper a classic Squealy Dan: choose Smoked Pork Loin or dry-cured Salami Mix as your meat, hold the green olives, and add black pepper.

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Reintroducing: The Phoebe has become a variant of The ’06!

The Phoebe is a Smokehaus spin on the classic deli sandwich known as a Rachel, which is itself a variant of the classic deli sandwich known as a Rueben. The Smokehaus spin on a Rueben is called The ’06.

The official changes to The ’06 are as follows:

•Meat options: Smoked Bison Pastrami, Corned Bison, or Maple-sage Smoked Turkey Breast.

•Cabbage medley options: hausmade Sauerkraut or hausmade Kimchi.

•Cheese options: Swiss cheese becomes the default. Cheddar cheese or provolone cheese are available as substitutions.

How to make your ’06 a classic Phoebe: choose Maple-sage Smoked Turkey Breast as your meat, select Kimchi, and substitute cheddar cheese.

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We appreciate your patience and adaptability as we enact these changes to our menu, and we’re excited to get these new sandwiches out of your thoughts and into your hands, mouths, stomachs, and hearts!

5 Things In The 2020 Hygge Gift Box

We could all use a bit more hygge in our lives. Hygge is a useful, if tricky to translate, Danish term describing "a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being," and it's the central principle guiding our midwinter gift box.

At NWS, we believe that feeling of contentment and well-being can be found by reveling in the good things that surround us in our Northern home. We also believe that, in this workaday world, sometimes embracing hygge requires a little inspiration—just the gentlest push. That's why we've curated this year's box of local goodness aimed at providing you and your loved ones with the means for a cozy evening in.

This weeks 5 Things will take a closer look at exactly what makes up the 2020 edition of the Hygge Gift Box!

NWS Traditional Smoked Atlantic Salmon

Our Traditional Smoked Atlantic Salmon is buttery, sweet, and smoky. To many in our loyal customer-base, this smoked salmon is the taste of Northern Waters Smokehaus, and they'll make a pit-stop in Duluth on their way North (or South) just to procure a piece. The centerpiece of every Hygge Gift Box is a half-pound slab of this delicious smoked fish.

Local Midwestern Cheese

Cheese is literally calming—it's been scientifically proven! Beyond that, cheese just tastes good. We choose our cheeses with love and care, and you'll feel it. Each Hygge Gift Box comes with a selection of one of our favorite regional cheeses, just like we sell in our deli.

Snooty Fox Tea

Nothing evokes "comfortable conviviality and ... well-being" quite like tea. Local tea artisans Snooty Fox Tea Shop have provided us with an assortment of their most calming and convivial tea blends. Each Hygge Gift Box contains seven sachets of Gold Spice Rooibos, Boreal Forest Herbal Blend, or Sauna Steamer Black Blend. Enjoy life like you enjoy tea—sip by sip.

Epicurean Cutting Board

Epicurean produces top-quality cutting boards and kitchenware right out of our neck-of-the-woods. Our friends at the Epicurean Factory Outlet in Superior, WI provided the perfect utility tool for your curated hygge experience: A compact walnut woodgrain cutting board. This beautifully-crafted walnut board is the perfect size for a mini charcuterie platter featuring your smoked salmon and local cheese, and it will ingratiate itself as a favorite piece of kitchenware.

Blue Heron Trading Co. Dish Towel

For the final contribution from our local friends, we just walked down the hall to the Blue Heron Trading Company. This beloved kitchen store is not just our #1 source for replacement vegetable peelers and fantastic $1 cups of coffee, but also provided the final touch to your hygge experience—a hand towel! Whether you use it as a table-cover under your charcuterie platter, use it for clean-up, or both, this Blue Heron-branded towel will serve you well for years to come.

(Bonus Thing: Raincoast Crisps from Patricia's Pantry)

A bonus for purposes of this blog's allocated number of Things™, our resident baker savant Patricia has crafted these wonderful crackers especially for the Hygge Gift Box. Blending nuts, seeds, and dehydrated fruits with herbs and just a touch of brown sugar, the Raincoast Crisps are the ideal compliment to the included smoked salmon, cheese, and tea, and, with their nutritious ingredients-list, are virtually guilt-free snacking.

The Hygge Gift Box is now available exclusively online! Each box is tastefully assembled per order.

5 Things- Word to your mom

It's been yet another crazy week here at the Smokehaus.

We’re a bit beside ourselves trying to figure out what the weather is going to do, and what our place within that ultimately is, but no matter what, the big Smokehaus wheel keeps turning and churning out great products. In this edition of 5 Things, we talk about what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and how we let everyone know.

Hippie Takeover!!! Ok, so there’s this thing where your company is so immersed in their own world and culture that they forget about the world at large, right? Well, we at The Smokehaus are no different. Our main focus since inception was to make quality products that no one else in our region, and very few in the United States, could match. Upon our start, we were really in a league of our own- largely because literally no one else was producing fine charcuterie and smoked fish to the high standard that we were. Our founder, Eric, has a real and palpable passion for food, and he is able to not only convey that to others, but find the people who have that same very real feeling to work beside him. So, love of food informs all that we do, and one thing we now know is that there are a lot of people out there who have this same love of food, but cannot or will not eat gluten or animal products. Which is why we have taken on the task of producing a delicious substitute for meat, so that anyone with any dietary needs can enjoy one of our signature sandwiches. We started off by trying to smoke both firm tofu and tempeh. We’re still learning! Our staff had mixed opinions, but we agreed that we were on to something! Everyone who works for us brings a wealth of food knowledge to the table, and so by our constant collaboration we feel as though we will eventually produce something that is really special. So, we will update you with our progress in the weeks to come, and until we nail it we will just keep trying these delicious experiments.

Word to ya Mother! We know that you love your Momma. We love our own Mommas as well, and have our own traditions in which we celebrate them each year. True to form, our owner Eric has a pretty unique food tradition with his Mom (with whom he credits kindling his love of all things culinary). Spring in Northern MN/WI/MI has always meant the annual running of the smelt. If you’re not familiar, smelt are a little sardine-like fish that are actually an invasive species to the Great Lakes, but one that those in the know really love. The tradition for fishing these little guys is to go to one of the many large tributary rivers of the Great Lakes and wade out near the mouth. There is a specialized net called a seine that kind of looks like a volleyball net which two people stretch out beneath the water. In a carefully orchestrated maneuver they will haul the net up on to shore, hopefully full of these little fish-stick fishes. The smelt are de-headed and gutted (usually with a pair of scissors and your thumb) and then lightly dredged in flour or battered and then deep-fried. The big smelt you can easily peel the backbone and little bones out and eat it like a fish stick (avoid the very end tail fin). The smaller smelt you can just crunch down bones and all (I kind of like the bones). They’re something that you can really only get fresh in parts of the Great Lakes region and definitely something that is not available in Iowa where Eric is from and where his Mother still lives. Eric’s Mom loves these little morsels, and every year Eric either cooks her some or ships them to her door. It’s such a cool and uniquely Northern thing to do that we have others considering this type of celebratory feast. The timing is perfect and the fish is surprisingly good, so why not give it a shot?

Beer And Food Are Great Partners! So, we know that craft beer has been absolutely exploding in our home state of Minnesota in the last 5 years (Not literally. Overcarbonated?), and we feel like one of the champions and great contributors to that would be The Growler Magazine. If you haven’t seen copies of this mag lying around your finer liquor stores it could mean that they have all been swooped up by those in the know who want to be even more in the know about the world of beer and it’s culture. The Growler has great contributing artists and writers who all share the common goal of educating and celebrating Minnesota (and beyond) beer, along with anything (food, culture, lifestyle) that goes with it. Luckily, The Growler has given our business great ink over the years, and it is readily apparent that the folks that work there truly love our food. In the spirit of that, The Growler came to our Canal Park offices to talk to our owner Eric and our General Manager Mary. Everyone sat down with some sandwiches and had a great lunchtime discussion about the history of The Smokehaus from inception to the present-day, with heavy emphasis on the thing at the heart of our success- our culture. The mutual admiration of our two entities was apparent, and our bond has been irrevocably established. We hope to collaborate in the future, at least on eating great food and drinking great beer, but who knows? The sky is the limit with two businesses that feel such great passion for what they do.

Save your bottles in the 218! Since our business is directly dependent on the pristine waters of Lake Superior, we consider ourselves stewards of the environment maybe more than others normally would. We also are a business comprised of people who love the outdoors and love all of the satisfaction and serenity that our favorite body of water provides us. We try to make small and large decisions that impact how we interact with the environment around us, and we always try to make as little of a footprint as possible. To that end, we decided to splurge and get a bottle filling station in our deli. Any one of our customers and really anyone in the building can fill up for free in a reusable container, thus saving on plastic water bottles. The station even counts how many bottles you have saved! One of our deli superstars Ned snapped this most opportune photo in celebration of not only what we’re saving on plastic, but also the area code in which we reside. It’s the little things that you do every day that make a difference, and we are ever on the hunt for that next little thing that we can do to preserve not only our pristine environment, but the lifestyle that we live within it.

Smokehaus Walk With Me. Our creative team has been on their grind lately! We have started to realize that our reach as a business is getting further and further, and that we need to respond and evolve along with the needs of our customers and in turn our own needs. Our first foray into a filmed commercial came at the hands of Jacob, a rising superstar in our Creative Department. You may notice that this commercial pays homage to one of those cult-classic weirdo television shows that is loved by only a few, but with a rabid devotion. This commercial is currently running at the local art house movie theater Zinema 2, and on our YouTube channel. We absolutely love it, and we think that you will too.