5 of 5 DeliciScore™ (From Heaven) Awarded to Gilbert's Main Street Bagel Deli for their French Dip Sandwich in Bellevue, WA on this 15th day of April, 2012 - Really great and I hear they have varieties, too.

Here's Gilbert's.  It's a nice, expensive little place in old Bellevue on Main.  My aunt and uncle (hey, we're got to get together soon!) live close by.  They serve bagels and sandwiches and have live jazz on the weekends.

It was a very nice, sunny, early Spring day.  I ordered from the line inside but then sat in the great outdoors with  my shades on.  It was glorious.

My seat outside.  Very nice.  Sunny.  Water with orange slices = bonus!!  I took the menu outside to study it and took lots of pictures of it but I won't bore you with it.  Overall, you should go to Gilbert's if you can stomach (no pun) the high prices.

Alright!  Here's my meal served.  You can see the the jus is actually French Onion soup.  And I got a side salad with spinach, a fine cheddar, pears, and almonds!  The bread looks very good and fresh-baked.

Close-up of my salad, which was really great and fresh.  And a bird's-eye view of the jus.

Here's the toasted bread and another close-up of the jus.  It's really good looking.  I added Swiss cheese to my sandwich for free.  It doesn't come by default but I do like Swiss on it: especially if it's free!!!  The jus is delicious and presently making my mouth water!

There's the sandwich (fancy toothpick) and pickle.  I only got a half of a sandwich and it was more than enough with the salad.  It was $14.99, so pricey!!!

The sandwich has caramelized onions on it (which was a surprise) but they were good.  The final bite is taken by loading up a bunch of really great-tasting French onion soup onions on their really good bread!

The good pickle is ridiculously big.  (Note size in comparison to fork.)

Other notes:

The price was high but worth it.  It's quality food!
I only got a half and that was enough.
They have a lot of really good looking soups on their menu:

It was a slow, sunny Friday for lunch.  And it wasn't very crowded but the service was pretty slow.  The food was really good.

Orange slices in water gets bonus points!

They have a very broad, fresh-looking menu

Their sandwiches (I saw several others delivered while I was waiting for mine) are really great looking!

The French dip sandwich, sans jus, was very juicy and delicious with medium rare roast beef and perfect bread.

The sandwich is an easy 5 of 0 to 5.

The jus was thickish and almost even gravy-like but tangy and great.

The spinach side salad was a 4: fresh, simple.  Good cheese almonds, pears.

2 of 5 DeliciScore™ (Not Quite There) Awarded to The Game Neighborhood Grill for their Prime Rib Dip Sandwich in Kirkland, WA on this 15th day of April, 2012 - Not my favorite.

Here we are.  The Game is a sports-bar in a strip mall type of place in the not-so-cute part of Juanita.
Jessica and I were out driving around and had to go somewhere and figured we'd hit this place up.

First, the Onion Fried Green Beans that we had for an appetizer.  They were pretty good.  Pretty tasty.
Fried, yes, but good.

Here they are.  Not terribly fancy but good.  Foursquare people had left a Tip about these so we got them.
They are served on a bed of iceberg (not the best way to present food!!!) and served with a side of
spiced up (Chipotle) ranch.  Jessica and I liked them but they were a fried indulgent thing.

Here's a close-up of what the beans look like.  Again, not the iceberg.  It really takes any hope of these  being fancy
out of the equation but again, we were at a sports-bar so what am I talking about?!

Okay.  Now.  Onto the French Dip.  It's a prime rib dip, even.  And their #1 Seller...so my hopes were high
but I would soon be very disappointed.  "No better around".  What a claim.  They are very wrong in this claim: there are a LOT of better Prime Rib Dips around: The Keg, for example.  I ordered a salad.  I didn't add cheese.

Okay, here it is served: the bread is too white and looks cheap (fancy toothpicks).  It came with a side of real horseradish but this didn't save it for me.  The jus looks a bit low but I'm pretty sure it was enough because the size of the sandwich was pretty small overall.  The salad looks fine from afar but wasn't all that good.

Here's a (blurry) close-up of the salad.  Iceberg again, nothing great here.  Pre-tossed with bleu cheese.

Here's a close-up of the sandwich.  You can see that they're not too generous with the prime rib.  And the bread really does look plain and terrible.  Bread = 2.  Prime rib = 1, probably.

So apparently I did order a backup jus that came rapidly.  I knew from the get-go I'd be doomed with the small amount in jus #1.  Again, look at that unattractive bread!!

A close-up of the jus.  Not steaming.  Probably a 2

Here's what's left of the sandwich.  You can see that the meat was maybe not even medium rare.  It just doesn't look good.

Other notes:

The bread was too soft.  1 of 5.

The jus was not hot enough, not steaming, and tasted non-descript.  2 of 5.

The prime rib meat was okay but too soft and not chewy and was possibly even mushy!!!  2 of 5.

Overall this gets a 2.

It was nice that they had real horseradish.

The side salad was no good.

I wasn't impressed.

4 of 5 DeliciScore™ (Great) Awarded to Ramblin Jacks for their French Dip Sandwich in Olympia, WA on this 15th day of April, 2012 - I miss you, Harbor Wholesale Foods!

Really rainy day in Olympia with my coworker and friend, Liz.  

Here it is: "THE FRENCH DIP.  Alder smoked beef and jack cheese served on a french roll with hales cream stout au jus."

I ordered it with a side of grilled vegetables and good horseradish that I didn't use.  The veggies were pretty good
the overall size of the dip was pretty generous.  It was served with a nice Kosher pickle.  The jus was plentiful.
Note the fancy toothpicks.

Here's a view of the bread and beef.  The beef is well done, probably not very juicy.
The bread is about right for a French dip although may have been overly absorbent.

Here's another view of the beef.  From here it looks a bit dry.

A close-up of the jus (note the oil separated) and grilled vegetables: zucchinis, carrots, onions, peppers.

The good pickle.

Here it is half-eaten.  You can see that I used up a LOT of the jus.  So it was not enough.  But jus is pretty easy
to come by and I've never met a wait person (to this point) that is stingy or slow with supplemental jus.

Overall this is a pretty good dip.  I give it a 4 on the scale of 0 to 5.  The waitress here was really great and she even tried to sell us on dessert (at lunch) really early on.  I took the second half to go.  I didn't really notice the jack cheese.  The bread was a 3 of 5.  The jus, probably a 4+ of 5, and the meat was about a 4 of 5 although a bit dry.  The pickle was good and it was nice to get grilled veggies on the side and real horseradish.