Best Budget Bites: $6.99 Roast Beef Sandwich From Kevan’s Penn Lake Roast Beef

The Bloomington roast beef wars have raged for decades. Let's settle 'em!

11:20 AM CDT on August 1, 2024

Jay Boller

The cost of things these days? Far too expensive! Inflation, supply chain, giddy price gouging from proprietors large and small—the boring factors are too numerous to count. To protect our readers, Racket launched the Best Budget Bites series, where we’ll showcase a toothsome, wallet-friendly food item that’ll actually fill you up for less than $10. Have a nomination? Hit us up: tips@racketmn.com.

What: Jumbo roast beef sandwich
Where: Kevan's Penn Lake Roast Beef, 8911 Penn Ave. S., Bloomington
Availability: 10:30 a.m.-7 p.m. (closed Sundays)

Certain restaurant names can act as emotional tripwires for opinionated Minnesota diners. Consider the exhausting Matt's Bar vs. 5-8 Club Jucy Lucy debate. Or the mere mention of Betty's Pies, the 68-year-old North Shore pie institution.

Cue the triggered lib meme!

(Racket's definitive 2021 side-by-side taste revealed that, yes, Rustic clobbers Betty's—it's not even close, folks.)

Our Best Budget Bites series stumbled onto another of these partisan grub fights when we recommended Wally's, the venerable suburban hot-beef slinger that has been at it since 1969. "Wally's is good, but real Bloomington Roast Beef-heads know [Kevan's] Penn Lake Roast Beef is where it's at," wrote commenter Tschep08. Sure enough, if you Google some variation of "best roast beef twin cities," you'll find a Reddit thread that champions Wally's, though the Penn Lake loyalists come out of the woodwork, too. (Maverick's Real Roast Beef in Roseville also gets some love, but I came away undazzled after my lone visit years ago.)

In the spirit of reader service, I felt compelled to venture deep into the heart of Bloomington to sample Kevan's. But before we get to the beef sandwich, we should address the most talked-about biographical tidbits of proprietor Kevan Tran. The first, and this is driven home via a photo display near the cash register, is that Tran learned the trade while working under Wally Erickson, the original Wally's owner who launched his beefy empire across the street from Tran's current Penn Lake Roast Beef address. (Wally's has since moved one mile up Penn Avenue.) The second is that Tran seems like a wonderful fella: In 2020, mid-pandemic, he was shot during an attempted robbery, and the community rallied him back into the saddle just three months later.

Located in an unassuming strip mall, Penn Lake Roast Beef might confuse first-timers with its cross-cultural fusion aesthetic. The place—from its fonts to its patterns to its DIY water fountain made from old tea bottles—screams Chinese restaurant; its Year of the Ox-evoking logo is orbited by Chinese characters representing "love" and "happy." The menu, however, is loaded with generously priced American comfort foods like sandwiches spanning roast beef, meatloaf, smoked turkey, burger, and cod.

OK, now cue the old, beef-demanding Wendy's lady! How are those beef sandwiches Kevan's has been slow-roasting since 1989?

Look... I take no pleasure in wormy equivocation. I wish I could summon a full-throated endorsement of Wally's or Kevan's, putting my journalistic bravery on par with the Pitchfork reviewer who declared height-of-her-powers Lizzo corny in 2019.

Sorry, can't do it! They're both terrific indie options that put Arby's to shame, both clearly cut from the same delicious cloth Erickson arrived at prior to the moon landing. Same buttery, soft bun? Check. Same piled-high ribbons of perfectly pink, thin-sliced, expertly rubbed beef? Check. Same tub of umami-exploding au jus for dunking, plus creamy horsey sauce capable of stinging the nostrils? Triple check. (It must be noted that au jus and cheese are upcharges at Kevan's and Wally's, though the total still falls short our ironclad $10 BBB threshold.)

The side dishes might put one restaurant or the other over the top, but that's impossible to determine within the fiscal constraints of Best Budget Bites. So take your pick: Wanna enjoy a cheap, tasty, hearty meal in a strip mall or beneath an office tower? If you're mowing down killer roast beef sandwiches along Penn Avenue in Bloomington, you really can't miss.