Best Reuben Around: Belgian Village Serves Hundreds of VandeReuben Sandwiches

You can't call it just a Reuben sandwich. It's the VandeRueben at the Belgian Village Inn in Moline, Ill. The unique spelling is a registered name for this platter-size, 26-ounce entrée.

The giant meal measures about 12 or more inches long. It is grilled in between two slices of the restaurant's tasty homemade rye bread. Of course, the bread is made into the size and shape of a football.

Inside the toasty rye, lies heaps of tissue-paper thin ham, corned beef, Swiss cheese and sauerkraut. But a secret recipe of Thousand Island dressing helps give that edgy taste that keeps the sandwich popular for 30 years. It's hard to handle the whole thing. Even two hands can't lift it up. If you don't want all the stuff coming out, it's best to just cut it in half or even in quarters. And leftovers aren't bad either heated up in the microwave or oven.

Even on a slow day, the small restaurant cooks up 200 VandeReubens. For the more adventurous eater, the VandeReuben can be ordered on gigantic raisin bread for 20 cents more making the cost $6.70. People have been known to buy a load of the sandwiches and ship them in dry-ice for their families across the country.

They bake their own bread each day to make sure that their customers get the highest quality in their sandwich.

Belgian Village Inn is located at 560 17th Ave., Moline, and the Belgian Village drive-through restaurant with carry out and seating inside is at 532 19th Ave., Moline. Both are closed on Sunday.

Moline is part of the Quad-Cities, a metropolitan area 2 1/2 hours west of Chicago. It includes the cities of Moline and Rock Island in Illinois, and Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa.

I've been going to the restaurant since it opened in 1977 - the year I was a freshman at the nearby Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill. I can still remember gasping the first time they put the sandwich down in front of me.

I can't express how large this thing is. You have to see it to believe it. But it's not just size. It is so tasty and filled with melted cheese. And the bread is to die for, too.

I love sauerkraut. I'm part Belgian and I swear my grandmother and mother both put sauerkraut in many things. My mom even put it in the most fantastic chocolate cookies I've ever eaten.

The restaurant still bakes it own breads and makes it own soups, desserts, salad dressings and some of its main entrees. They offer a full menu, but their mainstay is their sandwiches. Their burgers happen to be pretty tasty, too, along with French Fries. If you like blood sausage, they serve that too during different parts of the year. And of course, they offer Belgian waffles during breakfast.