Cheap Eats: Dickman's Meat & Deli

Like all of its sandwiches, Dickman's 6-inch Roast Beef is on Viro's Italian Bakery bread. (Credit: Tucson Citizen)

What was ordered: 6-inch hot cappy ($4.59), 6-inch roast beef ($4.59), two side salads (65 cents each), two 24-ounce drinks (99 cents each), for a total of $13.47, way under our Cheap Eats goal of a meal for two for less than $20.

Comments: If you're a fan of the Green Bay Packers, you are no doubt already familiar with Dickman's, owned by Wisconsin transplants and the home of "Wisconsin Bratwurst."

This comfortable deli-market-diner is also home to just about everything else, from organic produce to a huge variety of meats and sausages and nearly every kind of fowl imaginable.

It's also home to some extremely friendly counter people and excellent prices for sandwiches, especially considering that they're served on fresh bread from Tucson's Viro's Italian Bakery.

Dickman's sandwich menu allows you to build your own. You choose from 19 meats, 10 cheeses, condiments and either white, wheat, rye, marble rye or white or wheat sub rolls. The half sandwich runs you $3.59, the 6-inch or deli version is $4.59 and the 8-inch is $5.59.

In our experience, the deli version proved to be more than ample enough.

We went with "hot cappy" (capicola) and genoa salami on the first sandwich. The sandwiches here aren't overstuffed, but that's because the meats and cheeses are of good quality, as are the veggies and condiments. The lettuce was a nice crunchy leaf of romaine. The onions were sliced paper thin, and the spicy mustard was well-proportioned with the rest of the assemblage. They know how to build a sandwich here, and the zesty cappy and savory genoa were expertly outfitted with the other ingredients and the fresh, chewy sub roll.

Dickman's roasts its own beef, and the extra work pays off. As with the hot cappy sub, the roast beef isn't piled to the rafters as lower quality versions may be at other sandwich joints. The emphasis here is on quality and the right proportion of meat to cheese to bread. The beef was nicely pink, supple and fresh tasting.

Side salads showed the same attention to detail. The cucumber salad featured thin, succulent slices of cucumbers, which had been de-seeded and properly sweated to purge bitterness and extra water, and teamed with fresh dill and a light vinegar. The cole slaw's excellent texture and mild but appealing flavor was equally indicative of careful preparation.

Bottom line: If Dickman's is representative of delis in the land of the "Cheesehead" hat, the Big Apple has got nothing on Wisconsin.

Service: Order and pick up your food at the counter. Unlike at the chain sandwich joints, the staff here is not just going through the motions, and unlike a lot of "delis," it really is a full-service deli, butcher shop and local market.

Libations: Just the unleaded stuff.