B&B Grocery, Meat & Deli

The South Side’s Italian neighborhood has a long, well-known history, but few people remember that much of the South Side was actually an independent town into the 20th century. Sevastopol, literally “venerable city,” was laid out south of our two rivers during the Civil War and was centered at Southeast 6th and Hartford. The city’s oldest food establishment still operates there, as if oblivious to time.

Founded in 1922, B & B Grocery Meat & Deli is an old fashioned political hangout like no other. It’s difficult on occasions to tell the owners from the customers as so many people move behind the counters as if they work there. It’s one of the friendliest places in town — complete strangers are treated as cordially as neighborhood regulars. The food service is leftover from another era, too. I have been telling readers to visit this place for years in order to find pure pork, un-injected with sodium solutions, or to fill nostalgic orders for things like pig’s heads, carcass beef, whole hogs, head cheeses and souses, whole slabs of bacon, etc… B & B is also a reliable source of hamburger that has been ground fresh from a single carcass, an increasingly important distinction in the industrial age of E. coli and mad cow disease.

I visited for the lunch service recently for two reasons. 1.) Their pork tenderloins, an Iowa icon, might well be the only ones in the state that go directly from the butcher block to the deep fat fryer in a single process. 2.) I feared their business might be slow because both their crossroad streets were closed for construction. Most other businesses would just shut down when construction projects stop traffic for a few weeks. Here, life goes on like a beating city heart transplanted into a new political body.

The deep fryer separates this place from other deli counters in town. Its specialties include breaded tenderloins of chorizo, turkey, chicken and beef, as well as pork. When I ordered a beef tenderloin, someone walked into a cooler and came out with an entire tenderloin of beef to cut, tenderize, dip, bread and fry — for $4. A pork chop on a stick cost $3 and was superior to anything peddled at the Iowa State Fair this year. You can add French fries plus a side of coleslaw, macaroni salad or potato salad for $1.50. Or you can order side dishes from a menu of exotics such as chile poppers, chicken gizzards or livers, breaded oysters, fresh made deviled eggs, or potato chippers. Ribeye and Philly steak sandwiches also were under the $4 threshold. Burgers were served in one-third pound patties with singles, doubles and triples available, and $4.19 being the top price.

On the cold side of the deli, I am partial to the kosher corned beef and pastrami here, the best $4 sandwiches of their kind in town. They have a large choice of hams, salami, sausages and roast pork. They will even make a sandwich out of head cheese and souse. The specialty of the house is the $5 Dad’s Killer, a hoagie that includes corned beef, roast beef, ham, turkey and three cheeses.

Lots happened in Sevastopol since 1922. Supermarkets and cafés came and went, so did a Little League park across the street from B & B. Now things are coming full circle as East Village development moves south. La Pena, the best mom and pop Mexican café in town, opened a few block to the west, as did two good barbecues and Florene’s, a true scratch, butter and cream bakery. Sevastopol is again venerable, and B & B is still its foodie heart.