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| - Transplanting the tasty ingredients (or at least 10 sandwiches' worth of them), but few of the charming accoutrements of the home base establishments, the Gateway Melt outpost feels a little bit like a fast food joint wherein speed dwarfs heart, and the staggering list of eclectic add-ons has been sliced and diced down to its bare essentials. "Where's the soul?" Patrons asked the other day during lunch rush. "I've found the cheese (and I'm drooling over it), but where's the old school spark of vitality?" Indeed, everything without direct purpose seems to have been jettisoned: gone are the jolly holiday decorations, ditto the cutesy vinyl cover menus (the latter for obvious reasons--a date-night establishment this is not). Orders are now taken on check-list cards and the menu, as mentioned, is limited to the heavy hitters (mushroom, chorizo, BBQ, etc.) The cheese and thick-sliced bread remain, naturally, and they're still undeniably delicious. How Melt makes their American cheese so much like a synecdoche of the country itself: rich and robust and shiny bright, will forever be a mystery. Sadly, the sandwiches themselves are often less than the sum of their parts: slapped together assembly-line style and slopped into take-out boxes with a handful of fries salty enough to inspire tongue lesions. Vegetarians would do well to steer clear of the veggie burger, which was somehow both gummy and dry at the same time. The wait at high noon, while not as hideous as say Barrio's (which has been known to produce scads of Methuselahs daily), was nonetheless protracted. It should be noted that food is made as tickets go in, with no real regard for dining parties, so members of your lunch group could be served in a staggered way if you don't all take pains to order simultaneously. This might seem trivial, but at least one guest was served a good fifteen minutes after his companions on a recent visit. With only an hour to spare for lunch, many people would see this as a real inconvenience. Still, though this joint is David Foster Wallace melted down to Hemingway, it is still the same product in essence as can be found in the many larger flagship stores. The veggies are fresh and the sandwiches are reasonably priced for their apocalyptic enormity. If you wake up at your desk some afternoon screaming, 'I'm as hungry as heck, and I'm not going to take it anymore!' you can do a lot worse.
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