Kelly's Roast Beef - Medford, MA
Kelly's Roast Beef had been in the back of my head to visit ever since I found it while researching
Walt's Roast Beef. This weekend, I finally hit them during a trip up there to drop my Selectric off at Cambridge Typewriter for repair.
The Yelp ratings for all the Kelly's locations were less than impressive... but what I had was excellent.
There were all sorts of toppings available, but I kept it relatively basic with brown mustard, horseradish sauce, and raw onion, wanting the beef to stand out on its own if it could. It did. I found myself imagining that perhaps this was like what Arby's used to serve in the
old, old days, long before they switched to the processed rubbish we all know now. Or perhaps they were never at that level.
This was the "large" size, and at $9.50, it wasn't cheap. I was torn between whether or not the price was justified, because truthfully, this was an excellent sandwich. In the end, I decided it
was overpriced, if only because I remembered what I could get at
Carbone's for not much more. Maybe something like that was the source of the lackluster Yelp ratings. Whatever.
I also tried some of their cheese fries, which included crumbled bacon by default.
Definitely one of the better cheese sauces I've had, not your standard neon-orange stuff at all. The bacon was a nice touch but maybe a bit heavy on top of everything else.
I'm not in the Boston area all that often, so I'd prefer to make each trip unique in terms of food, and I'm not sure when I'll next be at Kelly's. That being said - and I've no idea what kind of a war I may be starting here - I'd choose it in an instant over Walt's, whose beef I found comparatively lacking in flavor.
post edited by Ketteract - 2018/02/18 23:19:51