TallBoy Opens Today With Far-Out Chicken Wings and Familiar Pastrami

TallBoy opens today in Shaw, replacing the former Smoked & Stacked sandwich shop with a neighborhood bar that sells baked chicken wings and its predecessor’s well-known pastrami until last call.

The office for Tin Shop, the development group that partnered on Smoked & Stacked with chef Marjorie Meek-Bradley, is next-door to the store. Tin Shop co-founder Peter Bayne says that in three years of business, he found himself returning over and over again to eat cured beef.

“The one thing we never get sick of is the pastrami sandwich,” Bayne tells Eater. “[We said] we’ve got to keep this thing.”

Although Meek-Bradley left the shop to focus on running St. Anselm tavern, her pastrami will live on in a “Smoked & Stacked” Reuben that joins a concise line-up of grilled cheese sandwiches at TallBoy— there’s also tomato, kimchi and bacon, Cuban, and fajita.

Plates of $10 wings include a General Tso’s style and an Old Bay dry rub. Because the kitchen has a combi oven — combination convection and steam — Bayne says he insisted on keeping the chicken out of the fryer. After all, that oven is part of the magic behind the pastrami.

“It turns out it makes a hell of a chicken wing, too,” Bayne says.

Tin Shop wanted TallBoy to be affordable first and foremost. So three of the namesake 16-ounce cans are $5, and nine out of 10 are $7 or less.

The cheapest sandwich, the Tom and Cheese, is $7. The name honors Tom Marmet, a friend of Tin Shop co-owner Geoff Dawson who died at 22 last year when he was hit by a stray bullet while sitting in his car at a stoplight. Proceeds from all the tomato and cheese sandwiches will go to So Others Might Eat (SOME), a nonprofit where the aspiring social worker was volunteering with recovering addicts to help them find jobs.

• Shaw’s New Late-Night Grilled Cheese Bar Opens This Week [EDC]
• Waiting at traffic light, aspiring social worker was killed by apparent stray bullet [WaPo]