5 Things: Product Features

Our marketing team has big plans for this new year and new decade, and among them is a goal to spotlight each of our various products on the blog. We hope you'll enjoy deeper insights into our products—what makes them special and how best to enjoy them.

This week, we'll direct you toward some of those product features we already have in circulation, beginning with the most recent.

Snack Sticks

From Bison Buddies to Smoked Salmon Buddies, the people love our snack sticks. At full stock, we're pushing four varieties of these ideal grab-and-go snacks, but we've got plans to grow that list.

Eventually, the creative bug will hit Eric and the production team, and we'll have new snack sticks joining the team, but until then, the above post has everything you need to know (and perhaps some question-fodder for things you want to know) about our sticks.

Natural Wines

The wine list in this blog is a bit out-of-date, given the new-ness of adult beverages in our deli (just barely over half a year), but in the above feature, you'll find pertinent information about how and why we select our wine offerings. Natural wine is the key—organically and/or biodynamically produced wines with no added sulfites.

If last year is any indicator, you can expect a new line of seasonally-influenced wine choices every few months.

The Fish Basket

The fish basket isn't all that complicated: your choice of Smokehaus fish in a basket with crackers and cream cheese.

It's a winning combination, and one of the quickest items prepared by our deli staff—usually your fish basket is ready to serve by the time you're finished paying for it. However, there are some clever workarounds and customization options that can help you get the fish basket (or smoked lake trout sandwich) of your dreams. Read the above feature to find out more.

Patricia's Bakery

Patricia, once hired, quickly ascended into the role of baker-extraordinaire. Her sandwich-line skills are admirable (anyone who has enjoyed our Spring Roll sandwich has Patricia to thank), but once she began bringing in cookies, pastries and quick-breads, it was determined that her talents were misplaced.

We thought we had it good when longtime Smokehauser Jerry began making select batches of bread*—now all of the rye, white bread and ciabattas—but with Patricia joining the baking team, we're now in the awesome position of having artisanal bread baked in-Haus, as well as amazing cookies, pasties, pizzas, scones, and much more available to us every day.

Check out the bakery blog, but really, just check out our selection of baked goods next time you're in the deli, and ask anyone who's working if you want to know more about any of the options: we have opinions, we have favorites, we will talk your ears off about which cookie to choose for any occasion.

*Jerry, I know you don't read this blog, but I miss your rosemary potato rolls and cheddar-chive-chorizo biscuits.

The Adisalad

The Adisalad has been on the menu for just over a year. This ultra-flavorful vegan or pescatarian salad ('kraut or kimchi, respectively) is the brainchild of Adison—dishwasher, baker, intellectual—who sought a healthier way to refuel at work, without sacrificing flavor. He brought it to Sandwich Lab, and it was so universally commended that we added it to the menu full-time.

We love carbs and fat—they're our bread and butter—but they're not always an option. With fresh greens, cabbage, our Haus pickled vegetable medley (daikon radish, carrot, garlic, onion, jalapeño, and more, with an exciting blend of spices), fresh cucumber slices, chopped Marcona almonds, and your choice of kimchi or sauerkraut, the Adisalad packs a punch of flavor and eating it feels like you're doing your body a favor.

The Next Feature

Next Tuesday (1/21), we'll have a lot to say in a feature of our newest deli case offering—smoked jerky! This week we snuck two awesome flavors of bison jerky into our meat case, and next week we'll be adding sockeye salmon jerky to the mix. And that's just the beginning.

Next 5 Things™, well, we'll see—Patricia's been up to a bunch of kitchen mischief with puff pastry dough and Country Pâté, we have impending remodeling of our office and storage spaces, we've got a tough-to-find(-in-Minnesota) cheese in our grab-and-go case, and our deli hours will be changing temporarily in February—that blog could go anywhere.

Until then, we love you forever.

5 Things: July 19th, 2019

We're in the dog days of summer—or we might not be—and life at NWS is heating up. Our first Thing™ offers an option for cooling down:

We've got White Claw!

I still haven't tried it*, but this low-calorie, gluten-free, slightly boozy seltzer water has become iconic of Summer 2019. One-hundred percent of planned beach expeditions I have attended this year have featured a cooler half full of White Claw cans. It's reported to be refreshing and taste quite good. I may or may not have "liked" a meme featuring a can of Hidden Valley Ranch White Claw this morning on the 'Gram.

We received our first shipment of Grapefruit White Claw this week. Lightly-flavored effervescent beverages (affectionately known as "day beers") are a longtime staple of life at NWS—a former deli manager once challenged herself to drink twelve cans of LaCroix in a shift, and the grapefruit and lime varieties of Topo Chico sparkling water have become a fast favorite for staff and patrons alike—so it follows quite naturally that our early forays into hard beverages would include what I am now exclusively calling "nighttime day beers" in my head.

*By the time this blog is posted, I may have consumed at least one can of White Claw.**

**Leif and I drank our first nighttime day beers together on the patio after work.

Heirloom tomato season is in full effect!

Every July, we purchase a beautiful bounty of locally-grown heirloom tomatoes from Hammarlund Nursery in Esko, MN. Ken Hammarlund himself brings us dozens of pounds of these delectable tomatoes in weekly increments when the season is in full-swing.

These 'matos are not only exceptional on the palate, but also come in beautiful colors—bright greens, yellows, and purples, and swirls of all three—so they are remarkably pleasant to prep for the day.

If you've ever been on-the-fence about sandwiches with tomatoes, July into the first few weeks of August is a great time to try them.

Waiting for your order on the patio is easier than ever!

We love our small storefront and our home in DeWitt-Seitz Marketplace, but it's not without its shortcomings. The hallway we share with Lake Avenue Café can become crowded whenever the sandwich queue is even a little backed up.

"Stick around. We'll call your name when your food is ready," was essentially the script. Those who wanted to establish themselves at a table on the patio were also given the annoying task of periodically sending an emissary inside to check on the status of their food.

But this has all changed now that we have added a public address system to our patio. We'll default to calling out names un-amplified in the deli, but if no one comes running, we'll double-down on the PA.

Grab that spot outside, catch some extra rays of sunshine, experience a bit of leisure while we make your order.

A little bit of Smokehaus lore.

Research and development for our first cookbook has provided a wellspring of insights into the growth of the Smokehaus. A bunch of these tidbits will make their way into the pages of the book, and some of them are going to pop into the 5 Things™ blog now and again.

During a rapid-fire meeting Tuesday morning on our patio, the topic of our salmon seasonings came up. Dill is a no-brainer when it comes to salmon, and a blend of black pepper and coriander bears a strong resemblance to another popular preparation of meat, but what of cajun seasoning?

Our cajun-seasoned smoked Atlantic salmon is a fairly popular item of its own, but unless you arrived at this web address accidentally and have no idea how you got here or how to navigate away from this page, you have probably heard of the Cajun Finn. The sandwich that outsells half of the rest of our menu. 40% of the sentence "I'll have a Cajun Finn," which is sometimes 40% of all words said by an individual ordering as part of a group.

Cajun-seasoned smoked salmon, it turns out, was an experiment with a current trend that ended up wildly successful.

Paraphrasing Eric: "People were putting cajun seasoning on everything, so we tried the same thing with smoked salmon, and people loved it."

That's a pretty wild innovation to just stumble into, and serendipitous. Who knows where the Smokehaus would be without the cult success of the Cajun Finn? I like to imagine the excellent quality of our food would have carried us to similar heights, but it's impossible to say.

Two new product features on our blog!

They put me to work this week—alongside work on the cookbook, a handful of press releases, and some updates of our online swag descriptions, I also whipped up a couple of posts about our selection of natural wines with suggested food pairings, and an often overlooked menu item, the fish basket. Since you're already here, think about checking them out.