D.A.'s Corned Beef Stand — Restaurant in Bremen Township

I'd driven past this place a dozen times over the years and never stopped... usually because I was always westbound during busy traffic and never wanted to turn across traffic to go in. I finally did stop in Wednesday 5/28 for a sandwich for lunch, and it ended up being less that I had hoped.

First of all, I get what they're going for here... focus on a niche, do it well, and insist on sticking with it until successful. Well, they've been in business for 29 years, so I guess they've been doing something right, but I have to say it wasn't apparent from my lunch order.

I ordered the "One Pound Corned Beef Sandwich", which is exactly what it sounds like. Think of the largest sandwich you've ever gotten at Arby's or Rax and double the amount of meat. The meat itself was the best part of the meal, and I would be tempted to stop by again and just ask for a 1-pound pile of meat. I have no idea if they brine/braise it on site or order it in (there's no signage or anything outlining their process that's made them successful for 29 years? Odd missed opportunity...), but it's tasty, if a bit on the bland side. It came between two very underwhelming slices of rye bread, which promptly started to disintegrate and were useless for holding the sandwich together by the time I got it unwrapped (I had about a 15-minute drive to where I was going to eat it). The physical size of the bread seemed substantial, but I don't know if the slices are too thin or the bread is just too airy or what, it more or less fell apart when I taken just a couple bites.

The only topping on the sandwich was plain yellow mustard. No other toppings were offered to be put on, but you could order toppings they would put on the side for you to add at your leisure. I suspect this is due to the aforementioned bread issues. I can't imagine how much more fragile the sandwich would have been with giardiniera oil all through it, heh. I asked for peppers and giardiniera on the, and they were included in two small deli cups that looked like they'd been packed weeks previously and taken out of a fridge/freezer. Limp, unappetizing, not fresh-looking peppers absolutely swimming in oil, and the giardiniera looked a bit brown and "wilted". Neither condiment looked remotely fresh.

Then... the pickle spears. Good Lord. Of course I got the pickle spears, you ALWAYS get the pickle spears at a sandwich shop! I was anticipating crispy, zesty spears cut from extra-large, tangy, fresh dill pickles, and what I was given was.... well, look at the pictures for yourself. They buy them pre-packaged and these were two days from their "Sell by" date, and had obviously been sitting in a box with for weeks/months under a pile of their peers, as they were smashed, unappetizing, and mushy... I didn't even take them out of the "bag". You know how you can tell by looking at pre-packaged salad whether it's fresh or starting to spoil? These were definitely not on the fresh end of the spectrum. It boggles the mind that a boutique sandwich shop doesn't try harder to provide just a bit of extra memorable pizzazz to what is otherwise a rather plain sandwich, rather than these pre-packaged afterthoughts.

Having seen that the sandwich came with "chips", I was expecting house-made chips, or at least something a bit higher-end... nope. 25-cent bag of regular/plain Lay's. Nothing against Lay's... I love Lay's. But I can go to the store and buy them for myself, I don't expect to get them on the side of a $20 sandwich.

So there you go... I love the whole idea, as I love corned beef sandwiches, and the indoor/outdoor vibe of the location is pretty killer. But the food was remarkably unremarkable, with a sandwich construction that is unimaginative and very plain, bread that isn't built to hold up to a pound of beef, condiments that seemed way past their expiration date, and "sides" that are phoned in without even the pretense of rising to the occasion of accessorizing a $20...

The food was great. I ordered 2lbs of corned beef. It was melt in your mouth delicious. My only gripe is with the customer service. I ordered online for pickup. I get to the place, hella long drive thru line which was fine for me as I wasn't in s rush or anything. We get to the window after about 25 minutes being in the line, let them know our order and at first they couldn't find it but eventually the young man says he sees the order. We drove back home only to discover that they gave us 2 corned beef sandwiches instead of just the 2lbs of meat. So we go back. Explain the mix-up. And we gave the sandwiches back, even after the young man at the window told us we could keep them. Not one time did anyone apologize for the wrong order, but the woman at the window (who took over for the young man who was initially working and demanded the sandwiches back) had a massive attitude about it all. She didn't say sorry or compensate for the mix-up and she gave us lukewarm meat. It wasn't hot or cold. It felt like it had been warm an hr prior and was just sitting out on the counter. She didn't give us a goodbye, thanks for coming or anything. She just handed us the food and ignored us. I know customer service is hard, I used to work in the service industry. It sucks and it doesn't pay well. But my goodness, she didn't even give us any basic politeness. I would be back because the food was good but not for those prices plus the...

Last Monday my wife and I decided to try DA's Corned Beef in Tinley Park. They are currently advertising a bye one sandwich get a second sandwich for 1/2 price. We have previously enjoyed their corned beef sandwiches the only concern being that they were a little pricey. With the special we expected a more reasonable experience.

Unfortunately after arriving home we found out the while the corned beef sandwich had the correct amount of meat on it, the beef pastrami sandwich had little if any actual sliced meat on it and was more accurately made up of the trim meat that falls off the slicer. Even that was lightly loaded onto the rye bread making hard to taste any meat between the bread layers.

Our eating experience proved to be less that cost efficient and probably worse than normal due to the limited amount of pastrami and scrapping.

There were 3 cars ahead of us in the drive through and a young very well mannered gentleman escorted the cars past the order window to park closer to the street while you waited for your order. The young man's manners were the only good part of our experience. The 15 minute wait does not seem consistent with what you would expect from a pre prepared sandwich meat purchase. Nothing to cook, the order includes a bag of chips and a tiny pre...