Uptown Provisions is a sandwich shop in the uptown neighborhood of Whittier. It’s on Penn St. and it’s mostly unmetered street parking around there. According to my friend who lives nearby, it’s become a bit of a local institution.
I’ve been there twice now in the last month. The first time I got the prime rib sandwich, which I thought would be warm (but isn’t).
Overall, I quite enjoyed it: I thought the flavors were well balanced, it has a little bit of sweetness to it that plays well with the general saltines of the rest of the sandwich and I thought the bread was good. $16 before tax/tip. Yeah, not cheap but they weren’t skimping on portion size at least. Rating: 8/10
This most recent time, I tried the meatball sub, which is served hot. My friend did warn me that it is a lot of food, even the “small“ size. It’s $18 before tax/tip and it’s not really clear to me why this is more expensive than the short rib sandwich but whatever.
As you can tell from the photo, there is a lot going on with the sandwich and my main complaint for it is that I found it excessively salty to the point where it washed out any other flavors it might’ve been layered into the sandwich. For example, after I was done with my sandwich my friends asked, hey, what was that green sauce on top?” and I honestly couldn’t tell them because I couldn’t really taste anything beyond salt so whether that was a cilantro or guacamole based sauce, I have no idea. I remember thinking while I was eating, “this is like someone rolled this sandwich in a bunch of ‘everything bagel’ toppings.“
It was still satisfying in a “I want a warm, hearty sandwich“ sort of way but the fact that I found it too salty really dimmed my overall enthusiasm for it. Rating: 7/10
They have a smoked pastrami sandwich which would probably be my order if I were to come back for a third time.
by soulsides