Egg rolls have come a long way, haven’t they?

For decades, they were something thrown in the takeout bag along with the Moo Goo Gai Pan. Then at some point, someone realized they could put just about anything inside wheat-flour dough and deep-fry it, and it just might taste good.

So we get Buffalo chicken egg rolls, Reuben egg rolls, chicken parm egg rolls, banana pudding egg rolls.

I’ve always found the little tubes a decent enough addition to Chinese takeout, but never paid much attention to them. Lately, I’ve become curious about these new, presumably American-born, iterations.

I knew that a new restaurant near my home in St. Pete, Sunshine City Tavern, has Smoked Brisket Egg Rolls. After poking around online, I discovered that The Joint in the Tyrone area has Philly Egg Rolls. A contest was hatched.

And because it’s customary to pair American egg rolls with a salad (I made that up), we ordered one at each place.

SUNSHINE CITY TAVERN

We’d driven by the restaurant’s “Opening Soon” sign countless times, and because chef/partner Ted Dorsey conceived it as a neighborhood hang, we were amped to try the place out. In addition, the location — on 4th Street and 44th Avenue North, had churned through a number of concepts over the years — most recently The Oaks, which didn’t last long. It’d be nice to see something endure.

We arrived at 5:30 Tuesday amid a strong wind and a slight nip in the air. Sunshine City’s interior memorializes St. Pete history, including posterized photos of vintage pics on the wall and plastic placemats with old postcards and maps. We sat at a booth looking out on 4th Street. Its table of distressed wood was a cool touch. The place was doing a robust business.

We ordered the Smoked Brisket Egg Rolls ($14) and the Belle Salad ($15).

Appearance

Perhaps … underwhelmed is the right way to put it. They were the size of Asian egg rolls. Two of them were cut diagonally and placed on a dinner plate. The insides of shredded beef and cheese did look tantalizing. The salad burst with color, courtesy of red peppadews, yellow apricots, green romaine and other tempting stuff. Three ample pieces of fried chicken added heft.

Texture and Taste

The egg rolls’ smoke quotient in the brisket and cheddar cheese was spot-on. The casing had expert levels of crispy and doughy. The flavors and textures melded for consistent deliciosity. We gobbled them up quickly. A little too quickly, if you get my gist.

The salad was terrific. A cornucopia of flavors — sweetness from apricots and candied pecans, the subtle bitterness of red onions, a hint of sharpness from smoked gouda. The chicken chewed easily, with a delectable crust. The salad was perfectly dressed with a Honeycomb Vinaigrette. A subtle horseradish flavor added an interesting twist.

THE JOINT

The Joint is set back off of Tyrone Boulevard near the junction at 38th Avenue. True to its name, it’s a no-frills place, the kind of bar/restaurant that softball teams go for post-game pitchers and cheap but credible eats.

At 1 p.m. Wednesday it was dark and bustling inside The Joint. Out on the patio it was 75 degrees and sunny. We grabbed a shaded table under an umbrella. The barstools were too low for the table — a booster seat would’ve helped, especially for Bonnie — but we quickly adjusted. A breeze shook the bamboo branches next to us, drowning out the traffic noise on Tyrone Boulevard.

We ordered the Philly Egg Rolls ($9.77), plus a House Salad ($6.97) with fried chicken ($6).

Appearance

The three egg rolls sat on a small plate and were crowded by a styrofoam bowl of queso sauce. The salad looked basic. We got ranch dressing for me, bleu cheese for Bonnie. The portion of chicken was just this side of enormous — five robust tenders.

Texture and Taste

These egg rolls qualified as par-for-the-course bar food — which is fine, because that’s what The Joint does. They were slightly larger than the competiton’s — and there were three of them — but the salty/juicy quality of a good cheesesteak didn’t quite come through. The thick queso masked their flavor. I took a couple dips and left it alone.

Kudos to the fried chicken — tender, juicy, and enough so that we took a couple of pieces home. The salad was also par for the course: greens, julienned cheddar and tomatoes.

And the Winner of the Beef Over Egg Rolls American-Style Is …

Sunshine City Tavern.

The was my first foray into nouveau egg rolls, so I appreciated the creativity, and the smoke, that went into Sunshine City’s version. Still, for $14, maybe put a third one on the plate.

The Sunshine City salad was this week’s shining star.

Note: You may have wondered, as I have, why the name “egg roll?” Doesn’t make much sense, right? Here’s what I found:

A recipe in The Chinese Cook Book, published in the U.S. in 1917, featured “dan gun” (“egg roll” in Chinese), which had meat and vegetables rolled inside a layer of fried egg rather than the wheat-flour wrap we’ve come to know. Apparently, they forgot to change the name. And “wheat flour roll” doesn’t have the same pop.

And, finally, nostalgia anyone? A photo of a Sunshine City placemat: