Edelweiss Sausage & Delicatessen

By Matthew Korfhage

3119 SE 12th Ave., 238-4411, edelweissdeli.com. Breakfast, lunch and early dinner Monday-Saturday.

At this German deli and butcher shop filled with wondrous chocolate, better beer and even better meat, second-generation deli masters Tom and Tony Baier dry-cure their proteins according to centuries of Teutonic tradition. They make without question the finest pepper-cured ham in town, with an assertively piquant crust that complements their lean, alder-smoked barbecued ham without accosting it. All their house-cured meats are available in sandwiches at impossibly cheap grocery-store prices ($5.99) for meat so voluminous it overwhelms its rye bread holder. But the most famous item isn't German at all—its excess would confuse them. Their $7.49 Reuben is such an unholy inches-thick spectacle of meat, cheese, mustard and house kraut it even got the loudmouthed Flame Shirt himself into the deli with a camera crew for a meat-grinding session. Mr. Fieri proclaimed it all very "gnarly."

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