Cafe Car: Turkey Butts and All the Canned Meat You Can Eat At Vegetable Bin Polynesian Deli

Photos by Matthew Piel

A weekly column in which we ride the light rail to random stops, hop off, and wander around until something strikes our culinary fancy, treating the train like our own personal café car.

The Stop: Rainier Beach

The Vibe: Unlike the stop immediately prior, the southernmost Seattle station has few buildings in the immediate vicinity. The bike trail and a green belt stretch along the eastern side of the street past a furniture rental store. And on the west a few houses sit beside more shrubs and greenery. The nearest restaurants are at least a block away.

But almost immediately adjacent to the stop is a corrugated metal barn. The purpose of the building, designed by Kirkland architects John C. Steinman and Associates, is a complete mystery to me. But I've always been fascinated by what's housed inside thanks to the sign out front announcing the name of...

The Café: Vegetable Bin Polynesian Deli, 8825 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way S. 725-0543.

Most mini marts try to keep a broad stock of over-priced necessities on hand--basic toiletries, select groceries, a few beverage cases. Vegetable Bin does not concern itself with diversity of product genre. The majority of its selection is devoted to one thing: meat in a can.

Mmm, canned luncheon loaf.

Covering every surface of one stack of shelves is every conceivable brand or sized can of corned beef, along with sardines, mackerel, Vienna sausages, corned mutton, something called "camp pie luncheon loaf," and that standard of Pacific island cooking, Spam.

Another rack is devoted entirely to crackers. The rest of the shelves have a spattering of standard mini-mart goods, industrial-sized soy sauce containers, and a few clothes and accessories. I didn't really see any vegetables, but perhaps we were just there on the wrong day.

At the back is a deli case and by 6 p.m. it's been pretty well picked clean. But someone suggests "turkey tails," so we go with that, baked taro (a kind of tropical potato) and a small loaf of coconut bread. I briefly think about asking if they sell can openers so I can check out that camp pie luncheon loaf, but our hands are already pretty full.

We take everything out to the plaza to eat and promptly regret not getting napkins. Looking at the lumps of of turkey sitting in our tray, I finally ask the obvious. "So, are they just turkey butts?"

"I don't know," my dining companion says. "You're the 'food critic.'"

It's not the prettiest deli food, but it's tasty.

And we dig in.

Ass end or no, turkey baked in a layer of its own fat and smothered in a tangy, sweet sauce is delicious. And the coconut bread is an ideal complement.

Really the only disappointing part of our meal is the taro, and that's probably my fault. Most of the taro I've eaten is mashed with sugar, fried, and served up on a dim sum cart. In comparison, a plain baked loaf tastes like cardboard. But it works well as a scooping device for the extra sauce and drippings in the bottom of the to-go container.

We eat our fill, suck as much sauce and turkey fat off our fingers as we can, wipe the rest on our pants, and wander back to the train.