We hadn’t been to Family Affair since before Covid, never since new ownership, and never for lunch. So we decided it was time to give it a try.
The parking lot out front on a Tuesday had lots of cars and the smallish dining room inside was pretty much already packed when we arrived at 11:30, so that boded well. It got even more packed shortly with people waiting for tables. Service getting us seated and drinked up ($3 Pepsis) was friendly and prompt, and the lunch menu looked promising. (Breakfast menu still available too.) So that also boded well.
But as it turned out, the food we ordered was disappointing.
The partner ordered one of the hamburger options, something with bacon ($14.99), and pronounced it so-so. I took a bite and pretty much concurred. On the positive side the burger was a decent size. The side tots were good and lots of them. IIRC they cost extra.
I had immediately spied “Reuben Sandwich” as an offering, and am always a sucker for a Reuben, though considering most recent Reuben experiences in Great Falls you would think I might learn my lesson about Reubens around here. But no. I don’t. So I ordered this Reuben. “Home Made Corned Beef!” the menu promised. How can you go wrong?
It turns out you can go wrong about Reubens. Tragically wrong.
We all know what a Reuben sandwich is, right? Some type of rye bread with corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and thousand island or rarely Russian dressing. Sometimes if you are adventurous, pastrami instead of corned beef. But the four basic ingredients in the sandwich remain: Meat, cheese, dressing, sauerkraut. That much is written is stone about Reuben sandwiches.
The sandwich that arrived looked okay though rather small, with nicely toasted bread. Chunks of corned beef were falling out the sides and a quick peek inside the sandwich revealed it was all chunks, no slices. Okay, a bit unusual, but when in Great Falls …
However the actual consuming part was something else. This was the weirdest and actually most unpleasant Reuben sandwich I have ever eaten, and that’s up against a long lifetime list of disappointing Reuben sandwiches.
The sandwich looked like it had an orange dash of thousand island, but you couldn’t taste it. None of that tang at all. If it had cheese it must have been a totally tasteless white cheese whiz. As for sauerkraut, there might have been a few lonely shreds of lightly fermented cabbage in there but their taste was indiscernible unless picked out and eaten solo. The overall effect of biting into this sandwich was the bread, yes the corned beef, and then some sort of mystery tasteless thick gooey melted/whiz something or other sort of holding the meat together that had a strange pasty consistency. It might as well have been lard. Or paste, that white grade school kind. Without that great grade school paste taste. I just could not figure it out!
But after about half the sandwich and many peeks between the bread slices I think I finally figured it out: This was a corned beef HASH sandwich! Perhaps the leftovers from breakfast. And the starchy goo I could not figure out was potatoes.
That sandwich was awful and I would not recommend. But I did finish it. For $15.99 you finish your sandwich. Plus I was hungry.
My side was a cup of lentil sausage soup which was okay in taste but was kind overcooked to the point it was mostly a paste.
Final lunch cost for two before tip: Something like $38.50.
I will be quite awhile before we go back to Family Affair for lunch. There has got to be better, even in Great Falls. Hopefully breakfasts remain good.
