The biggest club sando you’ve maybe ever seen can be found at Tacoma dive bar

Why would the club sandwich be the most expensive thing on the menu? What kind of club sandwich could it possibly be?

As we debated our dinner one spring evening at The New Frontier Lounge, the very-Tacoma dive bar and music venue by the Dome District, where the wooden Marlboro Man that once hung above the old Cheney Stadium now rests, I asked the bartender: “What’s up with the club?”

She replied first that it was quite good, flagging the extra step the cooks take of slicing the ham and turkey in house. Then she said, “It’s huge.”

The menu indeed cautions (boasts?) of the weight: a quarter-pound each of the two deli meats and thick-cut bacon, plus cheddar and Swiss, lettuce and tomato, of course, mayo and sliced sourdough bread. But justice cannot be served by mere explanation in the case of the Frontier Club. You must experience it for yourself.

“People order it and are like, ‘I could live on this for three days,’” said Neil Harris, who opened The New Frontier on the corner of East 25th and C streets in 2008. He eagerly responded to my query of featuring the sandwich — and the bar’s enticing kitchen — and gave his chef, Ryan Vincent, all the credit. But Vince, as he’s known, would probably play it cool.

“He’s just like, ‘It’s a club sandwich,’” continued Harris. “I’m like, ‘Dude!’ It’s becoming a legend in Tacoma.”

I disagree slightly in that it won’t keep for three days or even two, but I agree that it’s perhaps deserving of legendary status — at least in Tacoma, a town that loves its sandwiches but sometimes leaves me and others in a bewildered haze, wondering what everyone thinks a sandwich really is.

This stacked specimen is in its prime state when headed straight from kitchen to plate to your table, where your hands will attempt to squeeze it enough to get it where it needs to go. It’s the kind of sandwich you should order for the table — everybody gets a quadrant, carefully slid from the skewer holding each of the two six-layer stacks together.

“I like to do it in many layers,” explained Vincent on a recent Friday afternoon, taking a quick break from prep. Serpentfoot, a Tacoma-based psychedelic rock band, would play that night with fellow locals Endless Joy and touring bands from Los Angeles and New York.

‘Layers upon layers upon layers’

The chef grills three slices of sourdough bread — not fancy bread, but the right squared-off loaf for a proper club, with butter and oil. Bacon sizzles just until “it won’t bend on its own,” said Vincent. “On a sandwich, I don’t want it to break apart and fall out.”

The ham and turkey are folded in between layers of lettuce and tomato, with a slather of mayo on the untoasted side of the bread and little flourishes of the house sauce “to keep the house flavor.” Now three layers high, he skewers one half and cuts the entirety in half — then stacks one half atop the other, onto the skewer, and miraculously slices the whole thing yet again. That six-layer stack is gently displayed on an oval plate and finished with dried parsley.

“This thing is layers upon layers upon layers — that’s the way we like it,” said Vincent.

I watched him use just three slices of bread but you’d swear there were more.

“It’s actually all the same amount, but it’s layered to look like it’s more,” affirmed the chef, locked into the task at hand. “It kinda takes your full attention. It should! It’s the most expensive thing on our menu. It’s getting all the pieces to line up — that’s the trick. You gotta start thinking about that as you build it.”

In teaching his cooks the technique, he encourages them to “let the knife do the work here.” Any pressure and you’ll smush the stack. “If you do it right, you can hear it cutting through each layer.”

Vincent has led The New Frontier kitchen since the bar reopened in 2022 after a pandemic closure. Harris had only just renovated the now-122-year-old building to offer a full menu of sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, wings, salads and apps in 2019. He feels like the energy has finally returned.

“It’s been a long haul,” said Harris, who also owns the Hilltop property home to Manifesto Coffee, Goodfellas Barbers and 1022 South J (currently vacant, awaiting its next chapter). “The New Frontier is kind of a split personality because it’s kind of a gastropub, but we turn it into a full-blown music venue on Friday night. We don’t just set up an amp in the corner and give someone a microphone.”

Over almost 20 years, the bar has evolved, mainly in decor — less “tools, chainsaws and stuff which I thought was cool,” joked Harris, softened with “more funky lamps and stuff.” It’s comfortable, with salvaged furniture and a deer on the wall, a pool table and a vintage bar with chrome stools, where regulars catch up. The Marlboro Man watches over you, constantly smoking a lit cigarette. Near the stage, a neon sign remembers old Tacoma: The New Frontier Restaurant and Lanes at 4702 Center St., for decades a kinetic hub for families and league bowlers.

Outside, the fading green paint yields to grayscale. The Link occasionally trundles by. Inside, the band finished its soundcheck as fans arrived early for the 7 p.m. show, leaving time for a club and onion rings.

The New Frontier Lounge

• 301 E. 25th St., Tacoma, instagram.com/newfrontier
• Wednesday-Sunday 4 p.m.-midnight
• Details: chill bar, restaurant and music venue near Tacoma Dome; most dishes $7-$15, save for the $18 club
• TNT Diner tip: check event calendar for show nights with cover charge to access bar