For the state’s best Taylor ham/pork roll sandwich, head to the tiny cafe in Maplewood that looks like a secondhand store, furnished with classic rock LPs and vintage bicycles.
True Salvage Cafe emerged as the winner of our exhaustive statewide search with a Taylor ham/pork roll, egg and cheese sandwich that was daring and different — using scrambled instead of fried eggs, for starters. (I know I’m going to catch considerable grief from TH/PREC fanatics on that.)
Add yellow American cheese, four slices of meat and a superb roll from Balthazar Bakery, and you have New Jersey’s best example of its iconic breakfast sandwich.
The runners-up in our competition? The Greeks in Kearny and Johnny’s Pork Roll in Red Bank. Watch for our ranking of the state’s 20 best Taylor ham/pork roll sandwiches later this week.
TH/PREC purists will scream about True Salvage Cafe’s choice of scrambled eggs, but I missed the memo that a Taylor ham sandwich required fried eggs. And the fried eggs in many TH/PREC sandwiches are greasy and flattened beyond recognition anyway. Many TH/PREC lovers also say the eggs must have runny yolks. I missed that memo, too.
Our seven finalists spanned the Taylor ham sandwich spectrum: white cheese/yellow cheese; thick-sliced/thin-sliced meat; runny yolk/no runny yolk. Even the rolls showed considerable range — standard Kaiser, hamburger-type roll, artisanal roll... True Salvage Cafe uses Balthazar’s Village Roll.
The type of cheese is a particular sticking point among TH/PREC fanatics.
Tweet about white cheese
Tweet about white cheese
For the record, True Salvage Cafe uses Land O’Lakes yellow American cheese. Instead of a grill, chef Signe Heffernan pan-fries her TH/PREC in a skillet.
“We use two extra large eggs and don’t add water or milk to our eggs,” she explains. “They are cooked in butter/salt. With the Balthazar roll being a little more substantial, it holds up to scrambled eggs versus fried eggs, which is the usual for THEC.”
Heffernan, who previously served as a line cook/party cook at Danny Meyer’s Union Square Events and a manager/baker at Crane’s Deli in Maplewood, uses Trenton Pork Roll over regular Taylor ham (both made by Taylor Provisions in Trenton). She likes how it “crisped up in the pan. I tried a few different ones and always had issues with pan-frying and the Taylor ham falling apart and getting too smokey in flavor.”
David Heffernan, Signe’s dad and the cafe’s owner, runs a salvage business, thus the cafe’s name. Several of his salvaged pieces and antiques can be found in the cafe.
The inimitable interior of True Salvage Cafe in Maplewood.
The selection of the state’s best Taylor ham/pork roll, egg and cheese sandwich was the culmination of a long, arduous, multiple-napkin process.
Last year, I visited nearly 50 places and drove 1,400 miles in search of the state’s best Taylor ham sandwiches. That road trip, plus my previous TH/PREC experience, resulted in a list of the state’s 33 best Taylor ham/pork roll, egg and cheese sandwiches.
This March, I visited another 15 spots in an effort to pin down the very best TH/PREC sandwich. The coronavirus lockdown short-circuited that mission, so I recently revisited what I considered the six best and tried several others I had previously missed.
In all, I’ve sampled 75 Taylor ham/pork roll sandwiches in the past year.
The Taylor ham/pork roll, egg and cheese is the state’s most iconic sandwich, with scores of delis around the state proclaiming they make the best or the biggest or the most famous. Nothing gets New Jerseyans going like the mention of Taylor ham or pork roll, even if it degenerates into a sophomoric debate over which is the proper term.
For the zillionth time: All Taylor ham is pork roll, but not all pork roll is Taylor ham, which is a brand name. Don’t call it Taylor ham — I’m looking at you, North Jersey — if it’s not Taylor ham.
Taylor Provisions was founded in 1939, with John Taylor’s Original Taylor Pork Roll dating to 1856. Case’s Pork Roll, which bills itself as “the original Jersey ham,” can be traced to George Washington Case, who started selling hickory-smoked pork roll in 1870 at his Belle Mead farm. Today, Taylor and Case — both headquartered in Trenton — are the leading pork roll producers.
The daily menu at True Salvage Cafe in Maplewood.
True Salvage Cafe is more than just breakfast sandwiches and cool decor.
The menu includes a turkey melt with cheddar, bacon, tomato and chipotle mayo melted on a ciabatta; a roast beef special with cheddar, bacon, caramelized onions and BBQ sauce on a ciabatta; and a turkey special, with Swiss, greens, tomatoes, onions and Dijonnaise in a wrap.
There are also scones, muffins and homemade lemonade and iced tea.
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Peter Genovese may be reached at pgenovese@njadvancemedia.com.
The Link LonkSeptember 28, 2020 at 08:00PM
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This is the best Taylor ham/pork roll sandwich in N.J. - NJ.com
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