Sandwiches piled high with corned beef, pastrami and brisket may be coming to a street near you. The Corned Beef King recently purchased a second food truck and will be bringing his deli to the Rockville and Potomac areas.
Jon Rossler has owned Corned Beef King, a restaurant inside an Exxon station on Georgia Avenue in Olney, since November of 2012. However, he’s been offering a similar, but smaller, Jewish deli menu out of his food truck since 2011.
Within the next week, that truck will be dishing out offerings at the Montgomery Square Copenhaver Swim Club from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays.
During lunchtime, Rossler will take the new truck to Fishers Lane, Kings Farm Boulevard and Key West Boulevard, all in Rockville. It’s best to check his website, cornedbeefking.com, for his location on any given day. The website also features photos of his royal offerings.
He’s relaxed and enjoying the work now, but it wasn’t always that way. When Rossler first started, he spent evenings cooking and slicing the meat and preparing salads. Then he woke up early to get the truck ready for the day.
Now, he has 15 employees who help staff the restaurant and trucks.
His three facilities offer deli sandwiches, a meat knish filled with corned beef, sautéed onions, redskin potatoes and Swiss cheese and a veggie Reuben. He sells between 70 and 80 knishes each day at the Olney restaurant, he said. “I just made it one day and it stuck,” he said.
The truck by the swim club will also feature chicken tenders, hot dogs, grilled cheese and ice cream.
Each day his truck is loaded with enough food to feed 150 people, and generally that works out fine, he said.
He makes sure he has plenty of rye bread, Kaiser rolls and baguettes, homemade Russian dressing and spicy brown mustard.
He advertises that his corned beef is made with “buttah,” but he laughs when asked about that before admitting there is no butter involved. His sandwiches are so rich they taste like butter, he said.
His Reuben is very popular, but his steak and cheese — “it’s like the best steak and cheese in the whole world. It’s huge. It’s like a whole-pounder,” he said.
On a recent spring day, officer workers along Fishers Lane stood in line to get their favorite sandwich, which cost between $10 and $12. Most of the diners were regulars and knew exactly what they wanted.
Eugene Liu of Bethesda ordered a meat knish. He tasted his first knish here a few months ago and has been feasting on it regularly ever since, he said.
Stephanie Yun of Rockville has been eating Corned Beef King sandwiches for three years. “It’s so fresh. It’s really good,” she said. “It’s very addictive.”
Yun said she first heard about the thick sandwiches from a coworker, and she has gone on to enlighten other workers as well.
His love of all things corned beef began more than 40 years ago. His parents owned Celebrity Delly on Nebel Street in Rockville. They closed the restaurant more than 10 years ago and sold the name. It reopened in Cabin John Shopping Center under new owners. That, too, has since closed.
spollak@washingtonjewishweek.com
@SuzannePollak
