North of Boston, it’s a Beef
People stop for a Beef between errands, after a hockey game, on the way home from work.
Nobody here calls it a roast beef sandwich, any more than they’d call a sub a submarine.
New Orleans has the po’ boy. Philly has the cheesesteak. North of Boston, it’s a Beef. Nobody here calls it a roast beef sandwich, any more than they’d call a sub a submarine. Outside Beef Country, most people have never heard of one.
What’s a Beef?
A Beef is rare roast beef, sliced thin to order and stacked on a toasted, buttered roll. Shops cook the round roast themselves and season it with little more than salt and pepper. Lettuce and tomato aren't part of it.
Junior, Regular, Super. The Super is the big one, usually on an onion roll.
A Three-Way is a Beef with extra-heavy mayo, James River BBQ sauce, and white American cheese.
You order at the counter, next to a tray of cookies and, if you're lucky, baklava. Somebody works the slicer, builds it, and hands it over. Then you eat it fast, before the roll gives out.
Assembling a Three-Way
Rare roast beef, James River, white American and extra-heavy mayo, on toasted rolls.
From Revere Beach to 66 towns
The roast
Kelly’s opens on Revere Beach. The story goes that a canceled wedding left a pile of roast beef, somebody sliced it thin onto a roll, and the crowd kept coming back.
The sauce
Bill & Bob’s in Salem puts James River on the Beef, a sweet Virginia barbecue sauce with no business on a Massachusetts sandwich. It’s been the standard ever since.
The spread
Beef shops open across the region. Some towns have a few and some have none.
Beef Country
More than 150 Beef shops across 66 towns and five regions, and the count changes every year.
Nobody owns the Beef
A roast, an oven and a slicer are the whole operation, and the regulars make sure the basics hold from Revere to Rowley. What varies is how heavy the sauce goes on, how high the beef is stacked, and whether a Three-Way turns into a Four-Way.
Every shop is certain the town next door is doing it wrong.
Order a roast beef sandwich off a highway exit two states away and it'll taste like the last one you had. In Beef Country, order a Beef in the next town over and it won't.
A rare sandwich, from a rare place, served rare.