Turkey Cranberry Melt From Iggy's Sports Grill

One of the things I wanted to try for in undertaking this quest for the best thing between two pieces of bread was to order outside my comfort zone. After all, if I just keep ordering the same thing over and over again, how am I every going to discover anything better, right? Hence my decision to go with the seldom-ordered tuna sandwich (see below). That turned out pretty good! So, when our family paid a visit to Iggy's Sports Grill the other night, I decided to press my luck again. More on that in a second, but first a little background on Iggy's. Iggy's is a local Utah sports bar chain with close to 10 locations along the Wasatch Front from Ogden down to Orem. On this particular day, we were in the area, so we stopped at the Centerville location. I'd been to Iggy's a couple times before and had been impressed (the barbeque chicken pizza was especially good). It's a pretty nice sports bar with a menu I'd say is a little more diverse than usual, and, in addition, it's not at all a place you'd be scared to take your kids to.

As I was saying, insofar as I'm making an effort to expand my sandwich horizons, I decided to go with with the Turkey Cranberry Melt. The first time I saw a sandwich with turkey and cranberries on the menu somewhere, I thought it sounded horrific. I don't know why, though - those two things go together perfectly well every Thanksgiving, so why not on a sandwich? And indeed, the first one I tried (I don't recall where) was fantastic. The Turkey Cranberry Melt at Iggy's is made up of the following:

• Type of Bread: Toasted Rye
• Dressing(s)/Condiment(s): Iggy's Sauce (a variant of Russian Dressing)
• Toppings: Sliced Turkey Grilled with Swiss, Coleslaw, Cranberries

The turkey/cranberry sandwiches I'd had before were always cold, so I was curious to see how this would play on a "melt" type sandwich. I'm sorry to report that, although the idea has some potential, the execution on this sandwich was quite disappointing. Before I get to the actual scoring breakdown, here's one more photo with all the sides out of the way:

And without any further delay, here are the scores:

• Quantity/Value: 2/5 - I paid $7.95 for this sandwich which did include sides of french fries, coleslaw and a pickle, but for crying out loud - this thing was minute. I mean, look at the picture at the top of this post. The french fries and pickle are each clearly dwarfing the entire sandwich. I immediately felt a little ripped off.
• Originality: 4/5 - As I said earlier, the concept for this sandwich was original - I can't remember seeing a grilled melt with turkey and cranberries. Interesting idea.
• Appearance: 5/10 - Aside from being really freaking tiny, there were other problems with the appearance of this sandwich. I don't know if you can tell from the 2nd picture, but the combination of dressing on the sandwich itself, the liquid from the slaw, and the grease from the melting process on the grill all combined to leave this sandwich hemorrhaging a greasy liquid mess. Not appealing, brah.
• Quality/Freshness: 7/10 - Aside from the fact that the sogginess I just mentioned left this sandwich with a distinct feeling of not being fresh, the quality of the ingredients themselves left a little to be desired - the turkey was not of the lovely Thanksgiving variety, but instead your run-of-the-mill pressed turkey loaf cut into slices.
  
• Taste: 14/20 - At this point, I think it's important to remember that the name of this sandwich is the "Turkey Cranberry Melt". This name would imply that the important parts of it were turkey and cranberries, no? Well, go ahead an look back at that picture and tell me how much turkey you can spot. Go ahead, I'll wait........yeah, not much, is there. Now, if you looked hard, you may have noticed one cranberry on each half of the sandwich. Those two little guys are important because they were the only ones present! Seriously, I checked. Two cranberries. On the whole sandwich. Couple the embarrassing lack of headlining ingredients with the saturated sponge-like sogginess already mentioned, and, well, this thing didn't taste great. Imagine a Reuben sandwich with no meat that was left sitting in a sauna for half an hour.
  

In summary, while I will probably still return to Iggy's, it won't be to order their Turkey Cranberry Melt which stumbles in with a final SSTF rating of 32/50. Unless of course they rename it something more appropriate. Might I suggest "The Meatless Reuben Snackwich" or "The Coleslaw Melt".