How To Correctly Re-Heat A Richard’s Steak Sandwich

Some Background and History

If you are not from the Hamilton, Ohio area this post will make little sense to you. To help you better see where I’m coming from, think of your hometown. Now think of some of the very best food that’s unique to your home town.  Food so good that when everyone is home from out of town, it’s the first thing you order.  Well for me, and many other Hamiltonians, this is a Richard’s Steak Sandwich.   Richard’s is insanely popular in Hamilton. It’s our comfort food and if you ask any Hamilton west-sider what’s Richard’s phone number, I would bet 9 out of 10 will answer 894-3296.

Richard’s Pizza was started in Hamilton, Ohio in 1955 by Dick and Peggy Underwood and I remember in the late 70′s picking up steak sandwiches and pizza with my father. Dick was always there and he was always back tending the ovens. Back then, the logistics of carrying the food home was much more complex because this was before pizza boxes.   The pizzas where wrapped in a large paper sack which was crumpled up on top to make a bit of a dome.  So you needed plenty of extra hands when carrying-out because you couldn’t stack anything.

Richard’s Pizza is also Hamilton’s oldest pizzeria beating, I think Chester’s Pizza by a year, and almost from the start they offered their steak sandwich.  The steak sandwich began in the 50′s,  I’m writing a lot about the history of Richard’s to underscore just how special their steak sandwich is because I believe firmly that no restaurateur today would ever put on their menu a sandwich  like this.  It is too simple and too bold with it’s sauce, onion and pickle flavors and smells.  When I say smell, I’m not kidding. It’s a wonderful smell that will stay in your car and in your house.  There’s no hiding that you ate one.

Only the rugged mid-western simplicity of decades past could produce a sandwich like this.  Richard’s Steak Sandwich is an institution and like all good institutions, there’s an anachronistic element which is dearly loved but ironically would also be rejected by modernity if not for its history and tradition.   Here’s another way to put this -  it’s old school.

So what is exactly a Richard’s Steak Sandwich? It is:

• Buttered toasted Italian bun
• Steak Patty
• Richard’s steak sauce
• 3 Pickles
• Spanish onions

It’s a simple list but critical to the sandwich’s success is the quality of all the ingredients.  The Richard’s steak sauce deserves special mention here because it’s an essential element of the sandwich.  I’m unsure exactly what the sauce is but it’s a bit orange and it appears very thick when cold.  The sauce is baked on the bottom bun for about 5 minutes and then the top bun is hit with melted buttered and then assembled.  If I had to guess what their sauce is, I would say it’s blended mushrooms, pizza sauce and butter.  A lot of butter.

Richard’s has other toppings and combinations these days, but this is the classic and it’s known as a ‘Regular’.  For me, the Regular is the best and it’s the only way I order them.  Richard’s also offers their steak sandwich with pizza sauce instead of the regular sauce.  The pizza sauce is popular, and without sounding too critical, I think it’s a newbie  mistake and very un-Hamiltonion to order with pizza sauce since the bun tends to be more soggy from the moisture in the pizza sauce.  Since the regular pizza sauce is butter based, you get this amazing flavor that doesn’t destroy the bun with excessive moisture.  And if you’re also ordering a Richard’s Pizza, you don’t have the redundancy of pizza sauce flavor.  Again, this is only my opinion.

Re-Heating a Richard’s Steak Sandwich

My wife who had a weekend trip to Oxford, was kind enough to bring back to Cleveland four Richard’s steak sandwiches.  When she arrived home, she was placing them in the microwave.  Horrified, I stopped her immediately before any damage was done.  If she would have microwaved them, the results would have been steamy hot onions, limp hot pickles and steamy soft bun. Bad, bad, and bad.

To properly re-heat a Richard’s steak sandwich you need to understand the textures and temperatures that all work together to make it taste so good.

• Buttered Italian bun should be toasty (not crunchy) and hot
• steak patty should be moist and hot
• steak sauce should be fully melted into the bottom bun but not soggy
• pickles should be cold
• onions should be cold and crunchy

So there’s a complex mix of temperatures and textures you need to re-create in order to enjoy the sandwich at its best.

Instructions

1. Deconstruct your Richards Steak Sandwich by separating the sandwich into 3 groups:
   1. 1. steak patty
      2. onions and pickles
      3. bun
2. Place onions and pickles in refrigerator until cold
3. Wrap steak patty in foil and place in hot oven to re-heat. Avoid drying the patty out. You can spritz the patty with water to add moisture if needed.  the patty should never be dry.
4. Place bun on tray and place in hot oven to re-heat with the bottom bun sauce-side up.
5. Re-assemble with three pickles on steak patty and then onions
6. Cut in half and Enjoy!

A Regular Richard's steak Sandwich showing onions, pickles, steak patty, and bun. The steak patty is a marvel and you can forget finding this anywhere else because this doesn't come off a Sysco truck. Instead, their patties are ground and pattied by Richard's. The patties are juicy, dense but not tough or chewy, and they have a flavor profile I can't begin to put my thumb on - but I like it!

The buns are Italian buns which are cut in half and then baked. The bottom bun gets regular steak sauce and the top bun gets melted butter after baking. I'm such a regular sauce fan that I ordered them with extra sauce. Extra sauce means sauce is put on the top bun too. Since these sandwiches were going on a road-trip we asked for the sauce in a container so that we could bake the extra sauce on ourselves at home. The top bun is always baked with the cut side down but since this was a re-heat I opted to bake cut side up to avoid a crunchy bun.

Richard's Steak Sandwiches come with generous amounts of Spanish onion. They are best in early Spring and Summer when the onions taste very sweet.

I hope these instructions have helped and feel free to leave comments about the sandwich or Richard’s if you would like to share them.