Sometimes I think that Hunter Gambill has a bucket full of ping pong balls with different cuisines on them. Every few years, he shakes up the bucket, pulls out a ball, and opens a restaurant dedicated to that cuisine.
Here’s a list of the restaurants he currently operates, has operated, or is planning to operate: Gambill’s Distilling Company (currently open), Gambill’s Pastaria & Grocery (currently open), Gambill’s Wine and Coffee (closed, reopened as the Jewish Deli), Gambill’s Jewish Deli, Gambill’s Tex-Mex BBQ (yet to open), Gambill’s Mexican Brewpub & Ciderhouse (also known as Taqueria Escondido, closed or potentially reopening, depending on who you ask) and “EM: Curators of Craft” (some impossible-to-define barber shop and food space in Stillwater which Gambill either owns, operates or works at: but it’s Stillwater, so it’s none of my business). Relevant to our purposes today is Gambill’s Jewish Deli.
Gambill’s Jewish Deli is one aspect of the HGCU (Hunter Gambill Cuisine Universe), located at 11th St. and Lewis Ave., these days a terminal headache of Progress as Promised as the city works to turn the formerly unremarkable intersection into a thoroughfare worthy of those apartments being built across the street.
Gambill’s Jewish Deli is going to sell bagels eventually, they say, once that apartment building opens, even though they have the word BAGELS in huge letters on their windows. But for now, they sell coffee, wine, a few breads, and two entrées: a $17 sandwich and a $25 sandwich.
Delica-Stressin’
A discussion of the sandwiches at Gambill’s Jewish Deli must reiterate the fact that they are the only proper entrées on the menu. (A paper menu taped to the wall announced the inclusion of a few new, potentially permanent or temporary sandwiches when I visited, but I was there for one expensive purpose, and not to be dissuaded.) There are three sandwich options: the Pauli (brisket, horseradish, and provolone), the Pistol (pastrami, mustard, Swiss, and sauerkraut), and the Hunter (the Pistol with Russian Dressing instead of mustard). A 6 oz variant is $17; a 12 oz variant is a staggering $25; both come with a half-sour pickle and a side.
When I asked my Instagram followers what they thought of the price point, one cried blasphemy. “What is this, Katz’s,” went a reply. Another said, “I understand why it’s so expensive, but read the room.” “In Tulsa?” was a popular response as well. A few mentioned that they had eaten the sandwich, but would not again, due to the price point.
I myself doubted that a sandwich could cost so much to make. The purported reason is labor: a 2-3 week process, the restaurant says on social media, where the pastrami is dry-cured in-house, rubbed with red wine vinegar, smoked, pulled, and steamed before it reaches the deli (a recipe Gambill adapted from Rabbi Dan Kaiman, whose Seventeenth Street Deli pop-up has been serving similar fare for years).