A Mountain of Corned Beef

In my Cleveland adventures a few months back, I was excited to try the "best" corned beef sandwich in the world.  Well, it certainly was the largest corned beef sandwich I've ever seen.  First, however, let's start with the "how did we get there?" portion of the story.  You know when you're visiting a new city and have no concept of the "maybe we shouldn't be walking alone in this part of the city" notion?  So, we knew that we were going to Slyman's Deli for lunch and knew the general direction of the restaurant, but decided to ask the hotel concierge whether it was close enough to walk.  The theory was, if we were going to be eating a pound of corned beef in one sitting, we should probably walk.

This was the conversation between Mike, myself and the hotel concierge:

Us: How do we get to Slyman's Deli?

Concierge: Gives us directions.  Should I call you a cab?

Us: Well, how far is it?  Could we walk it?

Concierge: It would be fine to take a cab, it won't cost much.

Us: But how far of a walk is it?
Concierge: Probably 30-40 minutes, let me call you a cab.

Us: No, we'll walk it.

Concierge:  Really, I think you better get in the cab.

Us: No, we're fine.  We walk all the time.

What we didn't pick up on was that he was trying to warn us that it was not a part of the city that we should be walking in.  Folks, we were scared for our lives on this walk and if you know what myself and Mike do for livings, you know we don't scare easy.  Word to the wise, take a cab to Slyman's Deli.

Onto the food.  Holy catfish, the food.  Take a look at this sandwich...

This sandwich is fairly unreal, and you're only seeing half of it.  My only problem with it is that you can't actually eat it as a sandwich.  No one's mouth should open that wide...ever.  So, instead I had to cut it up into more bite size portions.  Also, the bread was a little on the dry side. 

However, the corned beef was so freaking fantastic.  Not too salty and really thinly sliced.  Sometimes corned beef can taste like a salt lick, but Slyman's was the perfect amount of salt without going overboard. Although, there must have actually been a lot of salt on it because I wore that sandwich in my ankles for a few days afterwards. Slyman's may give you kankles is all I'm saying. The meat wasn't dry at all, but wasn't juicy as to make the bread soggy.  Which is a huge issue for Mike.  Mike detests soggy bread, which is why I always tease him that I'm going to make him bread pudding for dessert.  
 
In addition to the sandwich we ordered a basket of fries, which can be seen in the back of the photo.  These were also perfect.  They fried them to the point of crunchiness, which I love. 

Overall, I'm not sure the Slyman's corned beef is totally worth going out of your way, but it's always fun to say you've tried it.  Where else can you get a mountain of corned beef on a plate?