After five years of owning a sandwich franchise, Knuckle Sandwiches owner Roscoe Smith decided he could create a better dining experience for customers with friendly service and a menu of items made almost entirely from scratch ingredients. He then opened Knuckle Sandwiches in 2019 at the southwest corner of Higley and Brown roads in Mesa.
“We roast whole turkeys every day,” he said. “We make our own pastrami, make our own corned beef, roast beef, chicken, meatballs, marinara – you name it, we make it from scratch. We even get our bread brought in from a local bakery, so it’s delivered to us fresh every day.”
The restaurant is open seven days a week and offers breakfast, lunch, and dinner with an extensive menu of more than two dozen different sandwiches as well as wraps, salads, breakfast burritos, bowls, and more.
The menu offers something for everyone, with vegan, vegetarian, glutenfree, and meat lovers’ options.
“I’m trying to be innovative,” Roscoe said. “A lot of places, especially when it comes to vegan and vegetarian options, you’ll have one vegetarian sandwich on the menu, but we have several to choose from.”
One of Roscoe’s favorite menu items is The American, which pays homage to his hometown of Chicago. The sandwich features corned beef and pastrami on rye bread with mustard, dill pickles, and Swiss cheese, then topped with coleslaw.
He also has a lot of pride in the restaurant’s Cuban sandwich, which is made with marinated roast pork, smokey pit ham, bread and butter pickles, dill pickle slices, Swiss cheese, yellow mustard, and house made Mojo sauce on a pressed and grilled Cuban roll.
“People come in and say that our Cuban is one of the best they’ve had since they left the Little Havana or Miami area in Florida,” he said. “We make it in the traditional way with marinated pork but then we made it a bit of a cross between a Cuban and a Medianoche by adding bread and butter pickles.”
With all its sandwiches, Knuckle Sandwiches focuses on serving delicious and unique creations made with the freshest ingredients and no processed deli meat.
Knuckle Sandwiches is located at 1140 N. Higley Road, Suite 103, in Mesa. To view the menu, or for more information, visit knucklesandwichesaz.com.