Squeeze-In Restaurant & Deck

There are not a whole lot of restaurants in John Day, Oregon, and we had selected the Squeeze-In because it had a creative name. However, there were signs in the window saying that they would soon be moving the restaurant to Canyon City. I guess that will mean one less restaurant in John Day.

When we entered the restaurant, we were told to sit anywhere that we would like. The dining room had a television in it that continually displayed lottery information. The menus were laminated printouts of a scanned version of their menu.

The dining room was clean and had little “homey” touches on the walls.

I ordered the Reuben with their beef noodle soup as my side. The soup was delicious!

The sandwich was a little short, measuring in at only 3 cm tall. They were quite sparing with the slices of pastrami, but they were thick pieces. While the pastrami was good, I found that I had to be quite deliberate about chewing off a bite—or else the whole slice of meat would slide out toward my mouth and disassemble the sandwich.

The bread had a nice, buttery rye flavor and the Swiss cheese was good. The sandwich got messy and sloppy pretty quickly. The sauerkraut was good, but it wasn’t tangy: it worked well for the sandwich. There was enough Thousand Island dressing applied to keep the sandwich moist without overpowering the other ingredients.

Even though the sandwich was a little light in the meat department and the sandwich wasn't very tall, it was filling and enjoyable.

I had concerns when the meat slid out of my sandwich as I divided the two halves, but it was plenty tender. The sandwich was a perfect portion size.

The “famous handcut fries” were a little disappointing—limp and not very salty. The deep-fried zucchini appetizer was great, and they had good coffee.