Have you ever sat in your car waiting for an Arby's to open? On Saturday, I did just that. And I wasn't alone.
We all had a similar quest: the elusive, crazily popular Arby's venison sandwich.
Last year, the venison offering took the fast food world by storm. It created a sensation in the five states where Arby's made it available, selling out in as little as 15 minutes in some spots.
This year, Arby's decided to make it available in all 50 states, and it expected to sell out of them by noon local time. Three lucky restaurants in three states, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, are also selling an elk sandwich.
Each Arby's received between 50 and 100 venison sandwiches, and the only way to get one was to show up. (My efforts to reserve one through an Arby's publicist were a bust: If I wanted to try it, I had to get in line.)
So I did, at an Arby's in Ann Arbor, Mich. There were already SUVs, pickups and cars in the parking lot when I pulled up at 9:40 a.m. for the 10 a.m. opening. My scan of the occupants and their evident excitement at their coming meal made me suspect these were like-minded people with venison-eating experience.
Michigan, after all, is a deer-hunting state, where some auto workers take the day off to head up north and where bars and restaurants have long offered specials for "hunting widows."
Those of us with friends who hunt are often gifted venison loins when hunting season is over. The meat gets turned into roasts, steaks, stews and, in my case, venison spaghetti sauce. (Pro tip: Add some olive oil or another kind of fat because venison is a lean meat.)
Arby's, which has made meat an essential part of its slogan, tapped into that hither-to-unknown fan base for venison in 2016, and this year, it went all out.
There were television commercials, signs in the windows and billboards outside each restaurant proclaiming Saturday would be venison day. And it stressed the limited nature of the venison sandwiches. When they were gone, said Arby's, there would be no more.
The doors opened, and the first thing I spotted when we all trooped into the Arby's were the colorful camouflage hats that all the staffers were wearing.
Each hat sported a red Arby's logo over a set of deer antlers, and they were definitely not for sale, no matter how much we begged. They were the staff's reward for getting up to feed us, we were told.
Everyone in line with me ordered a venison sandwich, which cost $7.49. After about a five-minute wait, mine was ready. In that time, I had gotten to know Mike, from Brighton, Mich., about 20 minutes from Ann Arbor. (He declined to give his last name.)
Mike had skipped going to his local Arby's because he felt there would be too many fellow venison fanatics there. Brighton, once small, is a growing city on the edge of rural land, a prime spot for hunting.
"Any place there's hunters, it's going to sell out fast," he said.
Arby's described the sandwich this way: a thick-cut venison steak and crispy onions topped with a juniper berry sauce on a toasted roll. The venison is marinated in garlic, salt and pepper and then prepared sous-vide for three hours. The sauce is a Cabernet steak sauce infused with juniper berries.
I opened the cardboard box to find a generous-sized sandwich. It had the promised onions, a purple-ish sauce and a thick slab of venison.
I bit in and found that the venison was medium rare, and a bit chewy. The onions added a crunchy aspect while the juniper berry sauce was sweet but also spicy. It was a cut above usual fast-food fare, and definitely a generous portion, well worth the price, especially given its rarity.
Around me, parties of mostly men looked pleased with their sandwiches. Across the room, Mike couldn't have been happier. "I love it," Mike declared. When I asked if he would eat it again, he said, "Well, I'm not hungry yet."
I had meant, "Would he eat it again at some point in the future?" but for Mike, the future would come sooner than I expected. "I'm hoping wherever I stop on the way home, there will be one left," Mike said.
Since I am rarely in the range of an Arby's, I spotted another menu item that I decided to try: a deep-fried turkey sandwich. No, the turkey is not breaded and fried: A turkey breast is deep fried, then sliced and piled onto a sandwich.
It was available in two varieties, one with Cajun spices — since deep-fried turkey is a favorite in Louisiana, and across the South — and one as a club sandwich, with bacon and cheese.
I opted for the Cajun style and found the meat to be succulent and tasty. Mike, who had recommended it, nodded in approval. He had high praise for the ventures by Arby's into various types of meat sandwiches.
"They've just been topping themselves," Mike said.
And from a meat lover, that's all Arby's can ask for.
