A niche neatly filled
Tede’s Café turns Old Pasadena into a sandwich and salad mecca
By Dan O'Heron 10/14/2009
Having to endure power-lunch outages in these days of a fizzling economy, I’ve found a place that fills the bill for good things to eat at a decent price — Tede’s Café.
As I mused over making a large sandwich on a recent visit, a large bus pulled up and parked at the curb in front of Tede’s. It was a black and white sheriff’s bus that transported prisoners from Pasadena’s city jail to the county lockup.
When two uniformed guards alighted, I dizzily thought they might be coming to Tede’s to get something for the fellas on the bus. The Pasadena jail has a reputation giving prisoners special privileges, like bread and bottled water. No such luck. The guards, apparently on a pre-prison break of their own, bypassed Tede’s, crossing the street to King Taco.
With a gray screen shrouding the windows, I couldn’t make out if there were any prisoners on the bus. Had there been, and had the fellas seen me assembling my banquet in a bun — roast beef, sharp cheddar, tomato, roasted red peppers, black olives, an assortment of spunky greens and horseradish mayonnaise ($7) — there might have been a riot.
Or had they seen the man with a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich ($3) — a lunch treat that calls up better times when we were all children — there might have been a few tears.
I’m not saying it’s always a good thing to make a sandwich that’s built like a bouncer in a strip club. Neatly pocketing the right blend and amount of meat and veggies inside of breadstuffs is quite an art and usually essential to good taste. Tede’s will do that for you with more than a dozen hot and cold sandwiches from $3 to $7, plus an array of salads for the same price. Only fresh and local ingredients are used.
And I’m all for the simple melted American cheese ($5) in a crisp griddle-cooked envelope of white bread — once so fundamental to the welfare of starving students and, these days, many college graduates.
But for the willing, able and confident do-it-yourself Dagwood Bumstead type, whose culinary skill is constructing an eyeful tower of disparate leftovers, there’s plenty more to do at Tede’s Café — only with better, fresher ingredients.
Working with eight types of bread, five meats, eight produce items, nine condiments, bacon and avocado sides, and five cheeses, you can create your own sandwich or panini for $7. This includes a choice of bread, one cheese and all the fixins.
A tip for greedy-guts, so they won’t be embarrassed by derisive shouts of “sooey” when fixings slop out of the bun: Before starting the build-up, gouge out the interior of the bun with your fingers to form a cavity that will keep the fillings safely encased.
What cheese to use in sandwichcraft? Here they include cheddar, Swiss, pepper jack, American and provolone; the last, buttery with a hint of smoke, is one of my favorites. With its great cooking qualities, most of us consider provolone only something to melt on pizzas or casseroles. But here, it’s ordained to be a rich, heat-softened blanket atop a grilled “Tede-made” ham or turkey sandwich ($7). I concede that many will argue that Tede’s roast beef with American, or ham and Swiss, are a classic cut above.
Tede’s owner Sean Regan says that the best three sandwich sellers are chicken salad, tuna salad and the house-constructed turkey, bacon and avocado.
For the menu’s tossed salads, Regan admits the kitchen has a split personality: a farmhand for freshness, a miser for vinegar, an intellect for vinaigrette, a counselor for salt and a madman for tossing. It serves eight salads, from $3 for a basic green to $7 for the all-everything Cobb, or you can turn your favorite sandwich into a salad or wrap at no extra charge.
A graduate of Pasadena’s La Salle High School and the local California School of Culinary Arts, Regan worked in management for the Patina Group under noted chef/owner Joachim Splichal. Among assignments, Regan opened Tortilla Joe’s in Downtown Disney.
“Joachim’s ideas about owning a restaurant inspired me to open Tede’s,” said Regan.
Before opening with partner and brother Casey in February, 2008, “We had long observed that a low-priced, satisfying lunch was hard to find in Old Pasadena and concluded it was a niche waiting to be filled. Judging by our continued rise in business, we were right.”
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