Taylor’s Gourmet – Great Food – Terrible WebSite
I sit here eating a Walnut street thinking how much I love Taylor’s food and hate their website. I spent a good few minutes getting frustrated with their flash website trying to order. It’s quite annoying. Why do you ask? Well, we’ll get into that later. First off, this is a food site, and we have to talk about their food, first.
I happen to really like Taylors. When they opened, we were there, living only 2 blocks away, on the day they opened. I have heard how some feel their bread is a bit chewy, but not I. Well, it is chewy, but in a good way. I love this Sarcone and his bread. It’s both soft and hard all rolled into one and is the hallmark of Taylors. You really can’t get a better sub bread in the city.
Favorite sandwich? Have to say so far it’s the Callowhill, a Meatball Parmesan cheese sub. But, honestly, how can you go wrong with meatballs and cheese on bread? It’s like a dream. The meatballs are nice and fat and the cheese matches with it nicely.
The one thing that stands out for me with Taylors, when I compare them to other Italian sub places that come to mind, such as A Litteri’s and, of course, The Italian Store, is what goes into their subs. First of all, when you get a sub at the Italian store, it’s LOADED. A capri on a hard roll hits the spot with layers of meats, cheese, sweet peppers, onions, its a dream. The sweet peppers are to die for and you really need to dedicate some time to eat one of their sandwiches. With Taylors, you generally get two or three items of high quality and taste. A walnut street, for instance, is a roasted red peppers and grilled chicken, both of which you can really taste and it tastes good. As complex as the subs at the Italian store are, Taylors are that simple.
That said, I do have to say that the bread at Taylors beats the Italian store, for me, every time. There’s just something about how it’s made that makes it both chewy and not soggy and very good. The hard roll at The Italian store is ok, just not as good as what you get at Taylors.
As for A Litteri’s, which really deserves it’s own post and will get one soon, its really more of a market that makes subs than a sub shop that has a small market. The sandwiches are good, but they don’t have any sweet peppers, last time I was there, and you should bring a PSP with you when you go. The wait times are really nuts. I haven’t been in a while and they may be less now that there are more options around the area but when the wait times are bad, they are really bad.
The ingredients at Taylors also make them standout a bit. They are always fresh and I haven’t been disappointed yet with what i’ve gotten. I’ve heard from a few unnamed sources how the subs aren’t as stuffed as you could ask for, which brings us back to the simplistic method, and its true they aren’t as stuffed as something you’d get at the Italian store, but the quality makes up for that for me. Though, if I had to make a choice between Taylors and the Italian store, as if both were next door to each other, I’d have to go with Italian store. No Taylors. No Italian store. Christ, makes me feel like the Fraggle Wembley choosing a Doozer Stick from the legendary Tooth Tower vs a slice of Mossmelon. How can you pick?!?!
I do highly recommend Taylors and its a great local place to get a good sub. For inside of DC Taylors is by far the best place to get a sub, yes even better than A Litteri’s when you add up all the points, including wait time.
Now, about their website. Fuck me, it sucks. I have been doing web development for a very long time. It just sucks. When I go to a retail or restaurants website, I don’t want to see flashy nifty cool effects that take time to load and give me a headache. I want to see a fucking menu on one page without having to scroll in some weird counter-intuitive manner. I want to find a phone number quickly, ya know, so I can order something and give you money, as fast as possible. I want to be able to create an account and order by your website, ya know, so you can make even more money and don’t have to man the phones all the time. Save the flashy bullshit for an artsy website where the main goal is to be artsy and not functional. Taylor’s has a hip new style and they wanted to incorporate that in their website, got it. But you can do that and still be functional. Your goal isn’t to be hip on your website or in your store, its to sell subs. The hipster shit has to bow to the selling of your merchandise.
Simple recipe here. Get a simple website, allow regulars to sign up and place orders, get the orders to your location so they are ready to go. For the money you spent on this flashy POC (That’s piece of crap) you could have gotten an iPhone app. Which would you have preferred? Do I even have to ask?
In closing. Taylors, great subs, lousy website. But who cares, I’m fat, I go there to eat, not be hip.
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