Dear EARL friends, we have some exciting news…
Early this year, will be our 7th birthday. We are so proud and humbled by the support of thousands of loyal regulars, hundreds of staff over the years, and a strong community of local suppliers and friends.
Simon and I honestly could not have foreseen such an exciting journey when we sat in our tiny home office and dreamt up the name EARL.
EARL has always been about sandwiches. The hero to most people’s lunch, we just helped make them that bit better and that bit more inspired.
Apart from sandwiches, EARL has always been about innovation. Whether it’s putting the ‘restaurant-quality’ ingredients inside, instead of on-the-side of the bread, to the equipment we use, or the way we hate to make you wait so we thought outside the cafe ‘box’ to get your lunch to you better and faster.
Innovation is something that I have a bit of a thing for. One of the best parts of my work at EARL is dreaming up the things we can serve; testing them, writing recipes, retesting and then systemising so we can roll them out to our now seven kitchen teams.
The way I like to eat has always been a significant deciding factor in what EARL serves, it pretty much doesn’t exist on the menu unless I really want to eat it. So, my recent, perhaps boredom (?!), with the humble sandwich has been a tough exercise in identifying if it’s just me or if something really needed to change. And we decided to change, AND I CANNOT WAIT, to tell you how, as we are all so excited!
Starting February 1st, our Fancy, ‘made-to-order’ sandwiches are getting a freshen up. It’s the biggest menu change we’ve ever undertaken and you’re going to LOVE it.
We’ve always hero’ed our ingredients, from the crazy-good crackling on the free-range pork, to the local lamb shoulders we slow-cook and gently shred, but they have always been a bit hidden, behind the bread, but now they are coming out into the spotlight.
All Fancy sandwiches will now also be available as a Wholebowl. It’s really quite simple; a mix of brown rice, red quinoa and blitz’ed cauliflower. Grain + Seed + Veg makes our GSV Wholebowl mix. It’s served warm in a bamboo fibre bowl with the hero Fancy sandwich components on top. So ‘sans bread’, ‘nude’, ‘like a salad’, the way I personally have been sometimes eating our ‘sandwiches’ from the beginning.
The honest, beautiful & healthful nature of what we have always done is now more on display than ever before, there’s no hiding behind the veil of that toasty turkish roll, if you select a Wholebowl that is. Reassuring those that are already skim reading in panic, our sandwiches aren’t going anywhere, all your favourite pork, lamb, chicken and meatball sandwiches will always be on the EARL menu, I’m after a freshen up to the menu, not protests in the streets!
Our GSV Wholebowl brings the humble Fancy sandwich from a Melbourne favourite in 2010, to a gluten-free, low carb, low GI, nutrient dense, feel good 2017.
I’m going to do another post on the specific details of all the cool healthful-ness stuff that many of you will want to know, but in a nutshell, the GSV has less carbs than sweet potato, so you get all the delicious bits and don’t need to compromise your self-discipline.
So Fancy gets freshened up this year. I can’t wait to let you taste it, I’ve been devouring it for months and am convinced it’s perhaps better than sliced bread…
Let me know what you think once you try it.
Jackie
Head Food Nerd – EARL Canteen
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