How to Order a North Shore Beef: A First-Timer’s Guide
People from away usually think they’ve had a roast beef sandwich, right up until someone takes them for a Beef. Here’s how to order one north of Boston, and what to call everything else while you’re here.
People from away usually think they’ve had a roast beef sandwich, right up until someone takes them for a Beef.
Stand in line at a Beef shop north of Boston at lunchtime and the orders start to sound like code. Super Three-Way. Junior, extra sauce. Regular with cheese, no mayo. The person at the register rarely needs more than that, and the roast is usually on the slicer before the customer has finished paying.
It works fine if you grew up with it. Everyone else is on their own. The menu board lists sizes and prices and leaves the rest to you, and the regulars in line behind you aren’t going to stop and translate. This is the short version, the things most people up here learned before they could see over the counter.
Where it came from
The sandwich itself is simple. A Beef is a round roast, cooked rare at the shop, seasoned with little more than salt and pepper, sliced thin to order and piled on a toasted, buttered roll.
As Kelly’s tells the story, the first one went across the counter on Revere Beach in 1951, when a wedding was called off and the stand was left holding the roast beef. The sauce came later. In 1968, Bill & Bob’s in Salem started using James River, a sweet barbecue sauce made in Virginia, and it became the standard. That’s how a bottle from Virginia ended up as a fixture of North Shore lunch counters.
Today more than 150 shops make Beefs across the 66 towns north of Boston that we call Beef Country. Most are family-run, and plenty of them share a menu board with pizza, grinders and fried seafood.
How to order one
There are three sizes: Junior, Regular, and Super. The Junior is the small one, though small is relative here, and the Super is the big one, which at a lot of shops means an onion roll in place of the usual bulkie.
The classic order is a Three-Way, meaning extra-heavy mayo, James River BBQ sauce, and white American cheese. Locals say the size first and stop there. “Super Three-Way” is a complete sentence at any counter in Beef Country, and plenty of regulars adjust it from there, asking for light mayo or double sauce without anyone behind the counter looking up.
What doesn’t come up is lettuce, tomato, or any question about doneness. A Beef comes rare, and asking for it well done is a reliable way to make the line go quiet. It’s handed over wrapped in white paper and meant to be eaten soon, before the sauce works its way through, which is why so many of them get eaten in the car.
The words that come with it
The sandwich came with a vocabulary, and most of it was here long before 1951. A frappe is ice cream blended with milk. Order a milkshake at an older spot and it may arrive with no ice cream at all, a lesson most visitors only need once. A regular coffee comes with cream and sugar. A hot sub is a grinder, the liquor store is the packie, and a roundabout is a rotary, where the cars already circling have the right of way, in theory.
Wicked means very and almost never appears alone. It’s wicked cold in February and wicked packed in Salem in October. A townie grew up here and never saw a reason to leave, and leaf peepers are the October visitors who slow Route 133 through Essex to a crawl while they photograph trees the locals drive past every day.
None of this is written down anywhere official. Get the order right and whoever’s behind the counter won’t say a word. Around here, that counts as a compliment.
Get the order right and whoever’s behind the counter won’t say a word.
Saying the town names
The town names trip up more visitors than the sandwich does. Peabody is PEE-buh-dee. Gloucester is Glaw-stah, Haverhill is Hay-vrill, and Reading, despite the spelling, is Redding. The rest, by region:
Greater Boston
Winchester (Win-chest-ah), Medford (Meff-id), Malden (Mall-din), Everett (Ev-rit), Chelsea (Chel-see), Somerville (Sum-ah-ville), Cambridge (Came-bridge), Revere (Re-vee-ah)
North Shore
Marblehead (Mah-bul-head), Danvers (Dan-viz), Middleton (Mid-dull-ton)
Cape Ann
Ipswich (Ip-switch), Wenham (When-um), Manchester-by-the-Sea (Manchestah)
Seacoast
Newbury (New-bree), Newburyport (New-bree-port), Amesbury (Ames-bree), Salisbury (Sauls-bree), Rowley (Row-lee)
Merrimack Valley
Tewksbury (Tooks-bree), Methuen (Meth-oo-in), Andover (Ann-dovah), North Andover (North Ann-dovah), Lawrence (Lahr-ince)
Every shop in all 66 towns is on the map. For where the North Shore starts and stops, see What is the North Shore, Exactly?
Common questions about ordering a Beef
How do you order a North Shore roast beef sandwich?
Size first, then toppings. The classic order is a Super Three-Way, the biggest size with extra-heavy mayo, James River BBQ sauce, and white American cheese.
What is a Three-Way?
A Beef with extra-heavy mayo, James River BBQ sauce, and white American cheese.
What sizes does a Beef come in?
Junior, Regular, and Super. A Super often comes on an onion roll. The others usually come on a bulkie.
Can you order a Beef medium or well done?
No. A Beef is cooked rare and sliced to order. There’s no choice of doneness.
Where can I find a North Shore Beef?
More than 150 shops make them across 66 towns north of Boston. Every one is on the North Shore Beef Hub map.