Scanwiches is a website run by one or more sandwich enthusiasts. There’s no discussion to speak of, only a presentation of each sandwich in a full frontal sort of view, presumably achieved by taking half of a sandwich and pressing it up against the glass of a scanner. I could do with more information about each sandwich, but as eye candy and occasional inspiration it does the trick. There is to be a book published later this year, a collection of scanned sandwiches, and to promote this book the website had a “fanwiches” contest, inviting readers to submit their own scanned sandwiches. The wining sandwich looked powerfully intriguing, and I would relish the opportunity to try it. Some of the sandwiches deemed runners up, though, left me a bit puzzled.

This is the “New Orleans Surf ‘n Turf Po’Boy,” a monstrosity of fried oysters, fried green tomatoes, potato chips, bacon, lettuce, caramelized onions, andouille sausage and a Cajun remoulade on a baguette. The longer I look at this the more ridiculous it gets. I suspect some manner of trickery was needed to get it to scan, and further that no amount of voodoo would render this tower of quasi-related ingredients edible. It’s too much, much too much. If you could get your hands around it you’d quickly find them full of oysters and sausage and chips as one ingredient after another shot out the sides. The baguette is a fine bit of bread but it’s entirely wrong for something like this, any pressure you apply to get through that crust is going to send the rest of the sandwich scattering. This is less a sandwich, an associate of mine remarked, and more some unholy salad. I couldn’t agree more. But the questionable judgement on display here pales in comparison to the howling errors made in a post a few days following the above.

That’s a lobster roll, and a lobster roll is not a sandwich. Shady entrepreneurs make this mistake in the name of profit, and ignorant children do so because they do not know any better, but I have no idea what excuse the people at Scanwiches have.