In 2013, renowned pastry chef Dominique Ansel introduced the world to a game-changing sweet creation: a croissant-donut hybrid known as the cronut.
The complicated cronut-creation process involves laminating and fermenting dough to eventually form a round, caramelized croissant-donut. They take three days to make, and folks wait in line for hours to get their hands on them. It's quite fussy, quite New York, and, almost a decade later, it's still among the most iconic desserts ever to come out of the city.
But enough about the cronut! Because earlier this year, Minneapolis got a delightful doughy mashup of its own: the bungle.
What is a bungle, you ask? It's like a bagel that's a bun. Or a bun that's a bagel. It's toothsome and chewy, like a bagel, but also soft and squishy, like a bun. No hole. If you ask me, it's more bun than bagel—almost exactly like the soft and crusty bread rolls I grew up eating Taylor Ham sandwiches on back in Pennsylvania.
People do not form blocks-long lines to acquire a bungle. The bungle does not fuss; it does not take nearly half a week to prepare. It's called a bungle, for chrissake. It's a modestly midwestern hy-bread, and you can find it daily at Silver's Market & Deli, the little sandwich shop connected to to Wrecktangle Pizza's new Lyn-Lake location.
At Silver's, the bungle serves as the base for several sandwiches: a BLT, a brisket chopped cheese, and a platonic-ideal breakfast sammie (all $10 each). If you order one or two for takeout, you'll probably wait about 10 minutes for 'em—time you can spend browsing Silver’s selection of housewares, art, quilted bags, and Wrecktangle-branded koozies, tees, and frisbees. (Also: Silver's-branded rolling papers.) Those lacking impulse control might find 10 minutes is the exact amount of time required to talk yourself into a new pair of locally made chainmaille earrings from Chained By Knight.
The breakfast sandwich from Silver's/Wrecktangle is simply a dream. Molten cheese oozes out from layers of fluffy eggs, which rests atop several slices of thick—but crucially, not overly thick—bacon. Like all bungle-based Silver's sandwiches, this is a hefty guy, the kind of sandwich where you might say, aloud, lifting it out of the bag, "Good god, this is a hefty guy." A smear of whipped Cry Baby Craig's honey finishes the whole thing off with an enticing combo of sweetness and spice (you'll know it well if you're a fan of Wrecktangle's hot honey-topped Shredder pizza).
It's the brisket chopped cheese, though, that's leapt near the top of my Twin Cities Sandwich Power Rankings. This is a kitchen-sink sammie absolutely piled with chunks of smoked brisket, which has gotten all mixed up with lettuce, tomato, pickles, mayo, and American cheese. The addictively savory result is a chopped cheese that recalls a small-town sub shop's finest—a chopped cheese where you're like, "Wow, these little hunks of meat are really, really good." I don't think I've had a sandwich quite like it elsewhere in town. It's so messy. I'm obsessed with it. (Even if the piece of tape bearing its abbreviated label read, somewhat troublingly: "bris.")
The New York Times, ever obsessed with the Hot New Thing, reported on the cronut's "mysterious persistence" just two years after its debut. But things move a little slower here in Minnesota, and it'll be no mystery to us if we're cramming bungles down our pieholes for many, many years to come.
Silver's Market and Deli
703 W. Lake St., Minneapolis
Sunday - Thursday: 11 a.m. - 12 a.m.
Friday and Saturday: 11 a.m. - 1 a.m.
