The Frugal Gourmand

Bretzel logic

There's a new place open in the Illinois Center, Hannah's Bretzel, which bills itself as the first organic quick service restaurant in Chicago. Even though the menu seemed a little limited (how many different ways can you combine two meats and three cheeses?), I decided to check it out.

My selection was Black Forest ham and Swiss gruyere on bretzel baguette, with whole-grain mustard and cucumber. Seemed like a decent bet, but in fact it turned out to be one of the saltiest things I'd ever eaten. (In retrospect, salty meat + salty cheese + salty bread + salty condiment probably wasn't the wisest choice, but how was I supposed to know?) I daresay it was almost inedibly salty, though I managed to get it down. It may have been the saltiness of the ham that really dominated things; though I caught occasional salt off the bread, the gruyere taste that poked through was pretty good.

Really, the crucial problem with Hannah's Bretzel is its very attitude; it's set up to be a haute couture-type of establishment. For example, I can't call the guy who made my sandwich anything but a chef - he was wearing a white coat with his name on it. You're making sandwiches! I guess if Subway is going to call its workers "sandwich artists" then it's kind of academic, but still. Seemed like a very European attitude, which would be fine if they weren't charging European prices. One sandwich - and granted, it's surprisingly large, although this may be partly a reflection of how long it took to eat on account of all the salt - ran me $8.26 with tax, and it wasn't the most expensive option by a long shot. God forbid you order the salmon - you're paying nearly ten bucks after tax for a single sandwich. It almost makes Quizno's look reasonably priced.

When you get right down to it, isn't this kind of why our country is so fat? I don't have any nutrition facts for Hannah's Bretzel, and just because they call themselves organic doesn't mean it's the single healthiest thing you can eat, but let's just say that it's in the top couple spots among Illinois Center fare for healthfulness. Compare it on price, though. Among other options I regularly choose, it's not just the most expensive, it's easily the most expensive. I can get a comparable amount of food at Burrito Beach for about five bucks. At Potbelly, four. Heck, at McDonald's I could probably get about the same amount of food for $2.50. Even Cosi, where I might spend seven bucks on a single sandwich, almost seems inexpensive by comparison, and with the right sandwich choice probably no less good for you.

It's like Jim Gaffigan says: "I can get this salad for 12 bucks, or these eight hamburgers for a nickel. Sorry, salad!" Even if I had loved my sandwich, and even if it were the best thing for me, there's no way I could afford to eat it every day. People are getting fatter because the worst food is inevitably the cheapest. It's also why lower-income groups are among the least healthy individuals in the country (well, it's the starting reason, although less access to quality health care is a big part of it too).

I don't mean to go all political on you here. This is really just a restaurant review, after all. And I feel sort of bad railing against a place that gave me a free cup of soup. But places like Hannah's Bretzel, no matter how purely motivated, aren't really solving any problems with their high-priced organic foods; they're just allowing yuppies to sleep better at night. The people who most need organic QSRs can't afford to eat here (although they probably wouldn't anyway, which is an entirely different issue). All that and the sandwiches contain enough salt to give Lot's wife hypertension. So long as you can live without eating organic food every day, it's probably fine to go ahead and give this one a pass.

posted by Flax @ 8:30 PM