Located at NW 12th Street and N. Hudson Avenue in the remnants of a former brewery and taproom, The Goose Sandies + Bar is an up-and-coming Midtown sandwich shop with a “sit down and stay awhile” feel.
With a neighborhood deli exterior and a bar on the inside, The Goose offers up sandwiches, salads and burgers as well as draft cocktails and beer. Can’t sit and stay? There’s a separate area for order pickups, making it easy to grab your food and go.
As a native Oklahoman who longs for an accessible East Coast-style deli, the restaurant’s opening a few months ago piqued my interest. While it was clear the next Katz’s Deli wasn’t landing in the middle of the metro, The Goose’s menu boasts a local twist on the classic delicatessen.
In this vein, my first menu pick was the Midtown, a sandwich layered with corned beef, provolone, sauerkraut and Goose sauce.
Now, I can generally appreciate a motif, but as an avid — and marginally allergic — food explorer, I find it more than a little annoying when an attempt to make an ingredient thematic means I have no idea what’s in it. I’d love to tell you what exactly Goose sauce is, but I can only give you my strong impression that it directly resembles the dressing found on any standard Reuben sandwich.
From the first bite, I realized the Midtown’s signature corned beef wasn’t like any I’d had before. Thinly sliced, it packed a surprising punch of aromatic spices, almost reminiscent of those on a Christmas ham. But as I continued, I found myself wishing there were a bit more sauerkraut and definitely more of the aforementioned Goose sauce — like, a lot more.
As any sandwich eater will tell you, you either care about the bread or you don’t. For some, a sandwich’s bread makes or breaks the whole experience. Heck, it can lead to undying lifetime loyalty to a single sub shop. However, this bread was, simply put, just fine. A vehicle to ferry ingredients? Definitely. The perfect complement to this sandwich style? Not quite.
Moving on, I wanted to venture out a bit into uncommon territory. While I can’t speak for everyone, I don’t often witness or even hear about many people in this city regularly reaching for a meatball sub. Perhaps I’m blind to a local meatball mania or maybe the Okie craving for something more burgerlike is just too strong for most. But a girl wants what she wants, and I wanted a meatball sub.
The Hudson, topped with cheesy meatballs, mozzarella and roasted red pepper marinara, fit the bill. While the bread paired better with meatballs than corned beef, I still felt it wasn’t shining the way it could. The cheese, however, was putting in the work. Each bite brought equal parts meatball and melted cheese, and overall, it felt like the type of sandwich you’d go in search of after a late night out. (It should be noted that The Goose closes at 10 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, so it can’t be that late of a night.)
Delightful surprise
My final sandwich sampling was something I was admittedly reluctant to order at first. As we’ve already covered, my heart’s deli desire is to frequent a New York-adjacent sandwich haunt like it’s my religion, so ordering a fried chicken sandwich at a deli seemed almost like blasphemy. However, I decided to do my due diligence and give it a chance. That was where I found The Goose’s true magic: the Whirligig.
Fried chicken, provolone, spicy honey, crunchy pickles and Duke’s mayo — the perfect combination for something great.
I’ll be honest. One look at this sandwich and I was a bit intimidated. The piece of fried chicken physically overshadowed everything else, not even close to fitting within the confines of the bun. But it was more than worth it.
Not to be deterred, I cut the Whirligig in half, truly committed to experiencing the ratio of ingredients as its creator intended. I was rewarded with an explosion of flavor and a mouthfeel that can only be described as, well, succulent. While just one part of this multifaceted sandwich, the fried chicken didn’t disappoint, offering up a tender, well-seasoned bite from the very beginning. With a piece of chicken that large, the bun had no hope of staying the course, but the sandwich’s crunchy pickles beautifully balanced out the otherwise soft texture.
The real applause, however, belonged to the spicy honey. Offering sweet notes alongside the mayo’s umami ones, the honey complemented every one of the sandwich’s ingredients. Accompanied with a lingering kick of spice (the kind that sneaks up in the back of your throat), savoring this combination ticked all of the boxes I didn’t know I wanted or needed in a chicken sandwich.
In an effort to make the sandwich experience complete, I couldn’t miss out on trying The Goose’s house chips. I’m not usually a fan of chips made in-house, likely thanks to years of accepting under-filled chip bags as the norm. However, I immediately saw the appeal with each rustic chip. The crunch was sublime, while the seasoning cut through the potatoes’ unmistakable flavor.
Overall, my opinion was mixed. While I most certainly didn’t find this new sandwich stop to be holy grail material — and there’s definitely no shortage of chicken sandwiches already alive and well in the metro — I’d be willing to come back again and again if it means I get a sandwich that clearly only has my best flavor interests at heart.
This article appears in New Year’s Eve Guide.