Sandwiches can be a creation of beauty, but it all depends on ingredients and the alchemy that brings them together. Karrie Williams and Mark Jakusovszky, owners and proprietors of Colonel Mustard’s Sandwich Emporium in Colorado Springs, realized that it is about specific local ingredients and purveyors.
But one element that ties it all together and got the ball rolling on their venture: mustard.
It started with baseball. Williams and Jakusovsky love baseball. It also began their love affair with hot dogs and their favorite topping: mustard. From their first trip to the diamond, they started collecting mustard. Jakusovsky traveled a lot for work, and they ended up meeting Barry Levenson, who is the curator of the National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Wisconsin.
Williams says that they have about 200 mustards in their own mini-mustard museum at the Emporium. “Barry, on the other hand, has 6,000 mustards.” She explains that every country on the planet has a special mustard.
“It’s so versatile. You can make a vinaigrette with it. You can do a sauce on potatoes. You can do a rub on meat,” she says. And we make mustard ice cream. It is one of the most popular things that we do at this little shop. We serve it with a pretzel and make it every other day now.”
Diverse Backgrounds Create Interesting Sandwiches at Colonel Mustard’s Sandwich Emporium
Colonel Mustard’s Sandwich Emporium has been open for nearly two years. But the road to its creation was an amalgamation of Williams’ many career specialties. Jakusovsk explains, “We’ve both been in Colorado Springs for over 25 years. Karrie has done all kinds of things. She’s quite a Renaissance woman. Everything from being an editor at the Business Journal to working at the Indy to being the alumni director at Colorado College.”
Williams also spent time in the 2010s working for Altitude Hospitality, running their gourmet market. “So, she really developed a knack for knowing what customers want. And at one point, she started talking to me about doing something new, something on our own.” Mark says they fell upon the idea of a sandwich shop as something that was needed in the neighborhood.
“And it was also something that was not a huge commitment relative to having servers or a full restaurant,” Jakusovsky says. “That’s one of the reasons it’s an emporium. It’s not just a sandwich shop. We’re actually retail. We want to do grab-and-go.” He says that was the plan early on, but they had no idea how it would grow.
What the couple finds is a balance between the mustards of retail and how their influence integrates into their sandwiches. Colonel Mustard’s carries their own line of mustards including flavors like champagne honey, sweet hot beer, red jalapeno, and aioli garlic. “Those are made for us and we sell those.” They also have been invited to be judges at the National Mustard Museum’s Mustard Day, which is the first Saturday in August.
The Wide Palate of Mustards
The palate for mustards, of course, ranges widely. Williams continues: “We sit here, and we taste mustards. Anything from Ireland, from Florida.” She says they found a dill pickle mustard that they absolutely love, which they use to make deviled eggs. “We have a maple mustard from Canada. It is delicious with ham. And from Napa Valley, I have a cranberry Chardonnay that’s really, really good with turkey. We sell cases of that at Thanksgiving.”
And Williams does gift baskets for Valentine’s Day too where she mixes a variety. “I have a Heaven & Hell basket for your Valentine: both sweet and hot.” They even have a root beer mustard from Wisconsin.
“I have a red chili and a green chili mustard that I get from New Mexico outside Santa Fe. And these are just phone calls I make with the actual mustard makers.” Williams says Jakusovsky calls her a “mustard maven” because when people come in, they ask her: “Do you have any mustard to put on my sandwich?” She then takes them over to four specific drawers in the shop where she has sample sizes of hundreds of mustards.
Through a process of elimination, Williams will find out if the customer likes spicy, sweet, fruity, perhaps whole grain, maybe a little bit horseradish. “Mustard is just versatile. And that’s what we do here.” They also serve the mustard with local pretzels from Mark Anthony Pretzels in town.
The Path into Sandwiches
The path into the sandwiches is an obsession for both but also a melding of minds. Williams says it must begin with the bread. “What’s a sandwich without spectacular bread? And we have the best from Josh with Delicias. He’s a master baker. He worked at the Ritz Carlton. Then he worked at The Broadmoor before opening his own place.” Williams says Josh’s swirled rye is a work of art. “You should frame it. I mean it’s very fun to have these relationships with all these local vendors.”
Jakusovsky says Williams is the driving force behind the sandwiches. When he was thinking about the sandwich shop initially, it was maybe ham on rye or turkey and swiss. But then she broke it down: “We’re going to have something like that. But what we want to do is make it special.”
Williams cites their Potato Chip Crunch sandwich as an example. “My mother sent me a cookbook from the ‘50s. This sandwich has Boar’s Head bacon, peanut butter that we bring in from Boulder, and potato chips. And we toast on multigrain bread.” She says a lot of people remember those kinds of sandwiches as comfort food. “They look at that, and they go, ‘Oh, man!’”
Unique Combinations of Ingredients
Another sandwich they love has to do with The King, Williams exclaims “I’m an Elvis fan, so for Elvis’s birthday, we do his peanut butter and bacon.” For Mardi Gras, they bring in muffuletta bread from Louisiana as well as mortadella and make an olive salad. For St. Patty’s Day, they create a corned beef creation and use an Irish mustard (Kelley) on beautiful, swirled rye.
Williams says one of their biggest sellers is the Major Tom sandwich and points out some of the military allusions present in their sandwiches: colonel, major, captain. “We play a lot with all that. That’s my father and his inspiration. He is a colonel. So that’s the colonel in colonel mustard.”
To make Major Tom, she combines cranberry cassis [a sweet Italian liqueur] and chutney with a layer of cheese and oven-roasted turkey breast and stuffing, she says people go crazy for it, but it is only available during the fall season.
Jakusovsky says that as much as they try to make their special sandwiches ideal, they will make a sandwich the way you want it. “If you don’t want onions or if you want to add pepperoncini, that’s perfectly fine. We’re not going to make your order off the menu.”
At Colonel Mustard’s, they don’t pre-make sandwiches. Jakusovsky says most people are willing to wait the five minutes or so it takes to make the sandwich. Colonel Mustard’s recently also got their alcohol license. But even with the beer selection, Mark explains, they focused on local craft beers. Some people, he says, prefer IPAs while others might like something like Sticky Paws from Field House or even a Guinness.
The major key is to make the sandwiches top quality. “That’s number one for us,” he says. “But also, to make them interesting.”
The progression of their business is always evolving. They will make sandwiches that aren’t on the menu even if they are simple, but they don’t want to demystify the alchemy of their tastes. They won’t put something like Ham & Swiss on the menu because it is simply not their identity. But Jakusovsky says, “if you want pastrami on a ciabatta. Perfect. We’ll make that for you exactly the way you want. That’s just not what we’re going to promote. What we are going to promote is interesting combinations and flavors.”
Williams says Sgt Pepper is their most popular sandwich by far. “The thing is every single time I make it, I’m just like, ‘Oh, my God, look at that sandwich.’ It smells incredible. It has pepperoncini, pepper jack, pepperoni. But then it has other flavored meat from Boar’s Head. It’s on one of those beautiful hoagies. It’s off the chart. People will stop talking when we go by with it simply because of the smell. It is just fantastic.”
[…] are a cornerstone of Blue Sunflour as well as the establishments she supplies like Colonel Mustards Sandwich Emporium and Humble Coffee. For Isbell, there are really two kinds of scones: English scones and American […]
[…] example he gives is the rye bread he makes for Colonel Mustard’s Sandwich Emporium. “I’m trying not just for the bread to taste good, but also to look good, and be practical […]