GCDs Beast

  • GCD’s ‘Beast’

Strolling through the River Market this morning, we noticed that Conway’s The Green Cart Deli had two of their love-wagons set up on the sidewalk in front of the mini-studios of KATV on Prez Clinton. Come to find out, they’d done a spot on KATV’s Daybreak this morning, and had decided to stay over for the lunch rush. We’ve heard good things about their street cart and their hotdogs (forgive us, Hot Dog Mike), so we decided to come back and hit them at lunch.

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Good call, us. From their big menu of toppings (they have a number of specialty dogs, though they brag there’s several hundred-thousand combinations they can make on customer command… check out their current menu here), Yours Truly picked the New Yorker ($4 for regular, $4.50 for a megadog with a fatter frank) with spicy brown mustard, sauteed onions, and kraut, and The Beast ($4.50 for reg., $5 for mega), loaded down with bacon, tomato, dill pickles, a house-made slaw, mayo and yellow mustard.

We would rate the New Yorker as only so-so, with a kraut that seemed lacking in both tartness and sweetness and a spicy mustard that didn’t seem to have enough mustard in it, if that’s possible. The NY’er did get bonus points, however, for being served on a hoagie roll so fresh and smushy that it was like eating a carbohydrate cloud.

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A broad leap better in both complexity and flavor was The Beast. Overflowing with toppings and with picture-perfect presentation on another of those oh-so-soft rolls, you probably wouldn’t want to try to eat it without a wad of paper towels handy or you’re going to get uninvited, in perpetuity, from the dinner parties of anybody who watched you wrestle it into your maw. That said, as with almost anything both messy and edible (barbecue ribs, Cheetos, banana splits, chicken wings, etc.) it was dang fine, with the bacon, dill, slaw and all the rest of the stuff on it melding into a special, disgustingly decadent kind of delicious.

We’re anxious to sample more from the Green Cart Deli menu, especially their complicated specialty dogs. They’re definitely making an honest stab at elevating street food to an artform.

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See their full menu on the jump…

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