Monthly Archives: August 2011

Breakfast Sandwich – Kevaccino’s On The Beach, Vista Del Mar, Los Angeles, CA

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I have a special place in my heart for the breakfast sandwich. Simply put, there’s no better way to start a day than with a good sandwich. It sets your spirit right and sends you into the world sated and ready for anything. A good breakfast sandwich doesn’t need to be complicated, but trying something a little bit more involved can often yield an excellent sandwich. On one recent cloudy morning, while cycling between Venice and Manhattan beaches, I stopped for a bite to eat. The breakfast sandwich at Kevaccino’s seems on the simple end of the spectrum, being listed on the menu board as simply eggs and cheese. An addition of avocado and having the sandwich grilled are offered, and I took advantage of both options. I’m not a man to pass up and avocado, and if you’re not dealing with a roll, toasting or grilling bread for a breakfast sandwich is almost mandatory.

The basics of the sandwich are on point. As you can see in the photo, the sandwich had a substantial amount of scrambled egg, and it was light, fluffy and moist. The cheese was a fine sharp cheddar and there wasn’t too much of it. The grilled was very light, just enough to give the bread a crunch without really trying to brown it. That leaves one remaining hurdle: The avocado. I’m sorry to say that that’s where the sandwich stumbled.Making my way through the first half the sandwich, I gradually came to realize something was not quite right. Peeling open the second half of the sandwich my suspicions were confirmed. What you see above is the entire amount of avocado provided on one half of the sandwich. The first half contained a similar amount. Combined, the two would struggle to equal even half of the most diminutive avocado. The avocado was not a casual “extra peppers” sort of addition to the sandwich. It was a specific option for which I tendered an additional dollar. I can appreciate that a restaurateur operates between thin margins, but what I saw in that sandwich strains the boundaries of what I can accept. I looked down at the second half of that sandwich and I felt cheated. This, I suppose, is the risk in pinning the start of your day to a sandwich. When it goes well, you set off with your best foot forward and greet everyone you meet with a smile and an open heart. If it goes wrong, though, if some charlatan, some rogue takes your money and delivers only the barest pittance of what he has promised, then what faith can you be expected to have in the world at large?

Pressed Cubano Sandwich — Public House, AT&T Park, San Francisco

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AT&T Park, located at the corner of 3rd and King, has been the home of the San Francisco Giants since its construction was completed in 2000. Since its gates have opened, it has become the hub of a brand-new downtown. Eateries, bars, clubs, shops, and other tourist- and family-friendly locations have sprung up for blocks in all directions surrounding the ballpark, and even within it. The “front” of AT&T Park proper is Willie Mays Plaza, a wide expanse of brick and palm trees, statuary, plaques, and two restaurants. One of these restaurants is Public House, which contains a bar and its own entrance to the ballpark.

I was pleased to find several sandwich options on the menu, and picked the most intriguing and, I felt, promising option: the Pressed Cubano. The sandwich included both roasted pork and Niman ham, and was augmented by both Provolone and Gruyere. The finishing touch was a few stray pickles, and the complete sandwich was griddle-pressed and served without further augmentation. The end result is a simply fantastic combination of complimentary flavors. The head chef at Public House is a classically-trained chef with a long pedigree, as is often the case with most eateries in San Francisco. I have learned long ago that when you find a legitimate head chef has placed a sandwich on their menu, you will almost certainly not regret ordering one.

The sandwich contents all blended together into a delightful creaminess, masterfully offset by the occasional snap of a fresh mild pickle, whose flavor simply added as a grace note to the palate, rather than an overpowering and unwelcome crescendo. The true star of the show, however, was the bread. It was, in a word, perfect. It is a rare gift to find a bread that truly completes the sandwich while providing the perfect containment for the ingredients and an ideal texture for biting through. I was over the moon at having been able to eat this sandwich before a lovely evening of baseball. I only hope that someday, all of you can experience the same.

Slummin’ It: Double Whopper With Cheese – Burger King

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As some states have made calorie information on the menu mandatory, many national chains have instituted such policies across the board. Burger King is one of those chains, with each item on the menu board bearing an estimated calorie count. What studies are beginning to show, though, is that no one cares. Instituting mandatory calorie labeling hasn’t lead to people making different choices. To my mind, this makes perfect sense. I walked in to Burger King wanting a double whopper with cheese, and that’s what I was going to leave with. The fact that the menu board informed me I was about to consume about a thousand calories didn’t sway me.

The information may not have moved me, but it did stick in my head. As I ate the sandwich I considered the number over and over again, constantly comparing it to what I was eating. I have no problem eating a thousand calorie sandwich. Some back-of-the-envelope math had the kimchi grilled cheese I made at close to 1000 calories, and had I included bacon it surely would have gone a ways past 1000. So it wasn’t the size of the number that was needling me, but simply the number in comparison to the sandwich. Because above all else, what struck me about the Burger King Double Whopper with Cheese was how insubstantial it was. The patties aren’t particularly thick. The bun isn’t tremendously fluffy, large, dense or really anything at all. There’s no sea of mayo, it’s only a few slices of cheese at most, but somehow you end up with a sandwich where there’s nothing there. The lettuce and tomato are lost in the mayo, what little flavor the beef has is lost in the cheese, but the beef is really very dry so the texture of the beef overwhelms everything else. The bun is quickly compressed to almost nothing, and just like that you’re left picking sesame seeds out of your teeth, having consumed a few slices of cheese and a helping of mayonnaise. And for this you’ve paid 1000 calories. The last time I brought up calorie count on this blog was over two years ago, in discussing a sandwich at Panera Bread. “You only get to eat so much in this life,” I said. “There’s no reason to waste 1000 calories on this sandwich.” In that case, it was that 1000 calories were wasted in the service of a borderline lousy sandwich. In this case, though, I think the sin is greater. It’s one thing to waste 1000 calories on a bad sandwich, but quite another to waste them on nothing at all.

The Istanbul – SUNdeVICH, 9th St NW, Washington, DC

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Sundevich is tucked away in an alley. I might not have even found it if not for the small chalkboard propped outside the door. The chalkboard read “SUNdeVICH – NOW OPEN.” I submit to you that this announcement was an almost superhuman display of modesty. The chalkboard should have read, at the very least, “VISIONARY AT WORK.”

I stood a few steps in from the door, staring at the chalkboard menu. I was paralyzed. I’d come expecting a good sandwich shop, an out-of-the-way gem. I wasn’t prepared for what I’d found. Consider The Cairo: hummus, cucumber, brined vegetables, walnuts, and fresh herbs. Or The Beirut: skirt steak, hummus, tomato, brined vegetables, and fresh herbs. Even the more simple sandwiches seem brimming with promise. The Athens: lamb, lettuce, tomato, red onion, and tzatkiki. The Madrid: chorizo and chimichuri. Their stated mission, local ingredients and global flavors, seems ripe for pretentious indulgence. Yet the menu is full of wonderfully creative sandwiches, one after another begging to be tried. Sundevich was not my first stop of the day and standing there looking at the menu I nearly came to tears facing the ugly fact that I was only going to be able to eat one of the sandwiches. I was leaving the DC area early the next day, too early to even pop in and grab another sandwich on my way out of town. No, I had to look at these offerings, make my choice, and live with it. Life isn’t fair, dear readers. Over and over again we hear this from parents and other adults as we grow up. We never really believe it though, do we? In our hearts we doubt it until one day we stand there, the warmth of our dreams departing us, the cold of reality cementing its grip.

I went with The Istanbul: Ground beef and lamb, sumac onions, tomato, yogurt spread and fresh herbs. After I made my order I saw the gentleman behind the counter put a patty of lamb and beef on a skewer and place it over the grill. Meat cooked to order! It’s one thing to get that in a sit-down restaurant, but in a counter-based sandwich shop it’s beyond rare. Any concerns I had that Sundevich would be high concept/low execution went out the window. The sandwich itself cemented my feeling that Sundevich is something special. The bread had a noticeable crust without being a chore to get through, the meat was well spiced but didn’t overpower the rest of the ingredients, the yogurt sauce and the herbs (chiefly cilantro and big leaves of fresh mint) made a tremendous pair, a tangy and sharp back and forth playing over the whole sandwich.

I’m haunted by that menu. DC isn’t one of my regular destinations and it may be a year or more before I get back. When I do return, though, it will be on an empty stomach and I intend to make a beeline for Sundevich. I’m going to line them all up in front of me: The Kingston (jerk chicken, spicy slaw, salsa, garlic mayo), The Shiraz (beef tongue, pickled vegetables, mustard), The Ifshan (souffle of (spinach, mushroom, walnut, barberry), feta) and more. I probably don’t have the appetite or capacity to make it through the whole menu, but that won’t stop me from trying.

Bagel Egg Sandwiches — Made at Home

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One of my greatest simple pleasures in life is making a sandwich on a bagel. It usually doesn’t matter what type of sandwich. I don’t care for cream cheese, so no matter how much I love bagels — and I do love them — my options for consuming bagels usually comes down to “plain bagel,” “toasted bagel,” or “bagel sandwich.” As you can see, one of those options is clearly head and shoulders above the rest.

I found myself with a few bagels over the weekend and no lunch meat. I briefly considered making a grilled cheese or a peanut butter sandwich before remembering that I had eggs, and so I made a monster bagel egg sandwich. I split and toasted an “everything” bagel, to which I added margarine. To this, I added two fried eggs and a slice of muenster cheese. The end result was quite pleasing, particularly with the bits of onion on the bagel adding a welcome, savory saltiness. The margarine was a bit lost, and had I used butter, I feel it would have been lost as well.

The following day, I decided to revisit the experiment with a couple of significant changes.

This time using a sesame seed bagel, I again fried two eggs and added a slice of cheese, but instead of butter or margarine, I went with apricot preserves. Although messy (due to the hole in the bagel), the combination of jam and egg is always welcome, and paired better with the sesame seed bagel than it would have with the “everything” bagel. I feel I made the correct choice with both bagel sandwiches. The only thing I would do differently next time is giving the eggs a liberal dose of pepper. If you find yourself with a bagel, a couple of eggs, and five minutes, you would certainly be doing yourself a favor if you whip up a quick and satisfying sandwich.

Boston Brown Bread & Bacon – Made at Home

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That sandwich is bacon and cantaloupe. If you’re making a sour face right now, bear with me. It was worth trying. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more natural the idea seemed to be. The other day I was soliciting ideas for what I might pair with a loaf of Boston brown bread, a rye/corn/whole wheat flour quickbread with a heavy dose of molasses. Something salty and savory seemed like the obvious choice, and within that category nothing leaps to mind faster than bacon. That’s a lazy choice, but I was already making the bread. 60 Minute IPA Pork Belly sandwiches would have to wait. Having settled on bacon, I solicited further ideas as to what else might go well. Associates suggested various items, all of them well within sandwich making tradition, until one associate offered a simple, one word suggestion: “cantaloupe.” At first I thought he was putting me on, but this was the person who had hipped me to the Nobadeer. The least I could do was take his suggestion seriously.

“Fast for a day,” I sometimes advise people, “then brainstorm sandwiches. In hunger, your brain will abandon fear and false limitations.” By the time I was seriously considering a bacon and cantaloupe sandwich, I hadn’t eaten in around 14 hours. I wasn’t about to faint, but it was long enough that my definition of “reasonable” had become more yielding. So I decided to try it. I wasn’t going to add anything else. The deep sweetness of the molasses, the salty, smoky bacon, and the bright sweetness of the fruit was precarious enough. No need to complicate things further.

It wasn’t bad. I wish I had a more dramatic result for you, in either direction. Many of you know how I feel about mediocrity, so I really do wish I could tell you it was shockingly good, or as terrible as your first instinct might have suspected. The bacon and the bread paired very well. The cantaloupe was a little incongruous, but not terribly so. Maybe I oversimplified, and with a few more ingredients a great sandwich would emerge. In any case, my curiosity had been satisfied. I moved on to other matters.

This was the first sandwich that had followed from the “bread, bacon, then what?” question. Sweet potato fries and green apple slaw together with the molasses resulted in three different levels of sweetness, each picking up where the other left off. This sandwich, like the other, wasn’t particularly fancy. It’s just a few things stacked between bread, but I figured it didn’t need anything else. Why gussy it up with an aioli, a bed of endive, or a jalapeño relish? Though the sandwich looked a bit plain, nothing else was needed so nothing else was added. The quality of this sandwich was miles above the other. The varying levels of sweetness worked very well together, and the various textures also worked in harmony. The bread was dense and chewy, the apples crisp, and the potatoes soft with a bit of crisp. Truth be told after, sampling half of the bacon/cantaloupe number I slid the melon off the second half and added the fries/slaw combination. Speaking of halves, the bread was a bit of a disappointment. Boston brown bread is traditionally a quickbread, and between the lack of yeast and my sub-par baking skills, it baked up into a squat, dense loaf. It was tasty enough, but it didn’t exactly provide the right base for the heaping sandwich I had imagined. That said, size and taste don’t have too much influence on each other, and this was a very tasty sandwich.

Shrimp Po’ Girl — Betty’s Eat Inn, Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz, CA

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There are times when the sandwich you want to make isn’t perfectly conducive to being a sandwich. This was the case with the Shrimp Po’ Girl at Betty’s Eat Inn in Santa Cruz. Betty’s is a kitschy faux-throwback diner done right. They refer to their sauces as “Lubes” which are all made in-house, and offer several interesting-looking sandwiches. I opted for the Po’ Girl, and when it arrived, my first thought was, “That’s a lot of shrimp!” followed closely by my second thought, “How am I supposed to eat this?”

Herein lies the drawback with the solid concept of the sandwich: you have a chipotle sauce, lettuce, tomato, onion, and a very generous quantity of fried shrimp on herb dutch bread. The roll is not sliced all the way through and is served resting on its bread hinge, with its contents facing the sky. The sandwich is also served with a steak knife, ostensibly to cut into two easier-to-handle halves. Unfortunately, a multitude of fried shrimp is not so easily halved as, say, a serving of roast beef. I could tell that if I were to cut this sandwich, the whole thing would go to pieces. I at first approached the problem of picking it up, fearful that Betty’s intended for me to eat the Po’ Girl with the toppings vertical, like a hot dog. If that were the case, this item would be forced to fall under the “Not a Sandwich” tag on this blog. Luckily, one given a firm squeeze or two, the enterprise was truly only able to be eaten horizontally, thus getting Betty out of those murky waters of misclassification.

The sandwich had a very pleasing taste indeed, although the sauce could have used a tiny bit more kick and I could have done with a bit more onion than the few strands that were present on my visit. The sandwich was also served with lemon, so I tried a squeeze on a few bites, but preferred the overall effect sans citrus.

The downfall with this sandwich was the difficulty in eating. shrimp kept toppling out of the bottom, top, and side on nearly every bite due to the tricky logistics of unsecured round ingredients combined with “filling creep”. I understand the need for the bread hinge, as there is no telling where the shrimp would end up on a piece of bread that is open on all sides. I believe it is merely the case of the sandwich being too large; if a shorter roll were used, or perhaps slightly less shrimp (although I would never want to deprive myself of extra shrimp), it would be much more manageable.

A good sandwich that comes with a slightly frustrating sandwich-eating experience is not a wash…far from it. This is a sandwich I would gladly have again, but it is certainly an effort to keep it together. A few minor tweaks and the overall effect could be pleasing all around.

 

Nobadeer – Jetties, Foxhall Rd NW, Washington, DC

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Countless sandwiches are born of food left over from another meal. We at On Sandwiches have had a number of fine sandwiches in that mold. The Nobadeer is the supreme sandwich of the category, the undisputed sovereign of the leftover sandwich. It is the Thanksgiving sandwich. Of course, it isn’t my Thanksgiving sandwich, or yours. Mine involves dark meat, for one, and a touch of gravy. No, this is just the broadest outlines of the archetype: Soft white bread, turkey breast, stuffing and cranberry sauce. (There’s a layer of mayo as well, but it neither adds nor detracts so I’m ignoring it.) That’s the rub of a sandwich like this; you run the risk of stoking a person’s nostalgia without the necessary fuel to really get the fire going. Some restauranteurs see this problem and surrender. They put forth no effort, counting on the simple fact that they’re appealing to sentimentality to carry the sandwich through. That never ends well, dry turkey, bland stuffing, cranberries that are more jelly than sauce.

The folks at Jetties don’t take the coward’s way out. No sandwich is going to be everything to everyone, so they just put forth a quality sandwich and dare you to be disappointed. And make no mistake, the Nobadeer is a quality sandwich. Named for a beach in Nantucket, it features freshly carved turkey that’s about as juicy as you can expect a turkey breast to be. The stuffing was moist and savory, and the cranberry sauce, with big bits of cranberry, was neither too sweet nor too tart. It wasn’t a perfect sandwich, with some problems in construction. The cranberry sauce and the stuffing were concentrated towards the center of the sandwich, leaving both absent at the edges. With a mediocre sandwich this kind of error can ruin things, but the quality of the ingredients in the Nobadeer carried things through and left it, a few bland bites aside, a great sandwich.

Pulled Chicken Sandwich — Made At Home

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I admit that this is something of a cheat…two cheats, actually. The first cheat is that this coda to our Pulled Porkstravaganza is actually the second pulled chicken sandwich to be featured during the celebration. The second cheat is that, although this sandwich was technically made at home, it was assembled from bought parts.

Inspiration struck at Whole Foods, when I noticed that they were not only selling fresh-made barbecue pulled chicken alongside the soups on offer, but they were also peddling pretzel baguettes, in the same vein as the pretzel roll I had enjoyed so long ago. On the spot, I decided to create something of a simple “greatest hits” sandwich.

I sliced the pretzel baguette and heaped on the pulled chicken, then smeared the top half of the bread liberally with the incomparable Philippe’s mustard. The end result was simple, elegant, and as pleasing as I’d hoped. The chicken was fresh and tender, yet firm, which was key, as it complemented the pretzel roll. I fear that, had the pretzel roll been paired with pulled pork, the pork would not have the weight needed to counteract the very unique bread. The sauce on the chicken was just enough, but the mustard really set the whole thing off. The Philippe’s mustard has a well-earned attitude that cut through the sauce nicely and added zing to the enterprise. (By contrast, I tried a tiny version of this sandwich with Beaver brand Sweet Hot mustard, and it didn’t stand up nearly as well. Beaver is a fine mustard, but didn’t cut through the sauce like Philippe’s.)

In essence, this is a fine sandwich that you can build for yourself if you have access to a Whole Foods. I highly recommend it.

 

USDA Prime Beef French Dip – Cole’s, 6th St, Los Angeles, CA

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The Beef Dip sandwich from Cole'sHaving featured (and highly praised) the French Dip from Phillipe’s, it is only fair that I give a chance to the other establishment claiming to have invented the sandwich. Where Phillipe’s claimed a roll was inadvertently dropped into a pan of jus, Cole’s story is that such a dip was made intentionally, to cater to a customer with sore gums. I’m not sure which story is true, and to be frank I don’t care. It’s the sandwiches I’m after, not the trivia.

This is the beef dip, where the linked Phillipe’s sandwich is the pork dip. I’ve tried the beef and the pork at both places, so forgive me for jumping back & forth while only having a picture of one or the other. I suppose the simplest way to do this is to simply run down who does what better. The beef dip is better at Phillipe’s, and the pork dip is better at Cole’s. The fact that the pork dip is listed above the beef on Cole’s menu suggests that maybe they’re aware that their pork supersedes the beef. Whether they know it or not, though, those are the facts as I see them. The associated matters seem an even draw. The mustard at Phillipe’s is smooth and yellow with a substantial amount of horseradish, the mustard at Cole’s is pale and features even more horseradish, present in shreds. The atmospheres of the establishments differ significantly, Cole’s being a restaurant with subdued lighting and a bar that can put forth a very impressive old fashioned. Phillipe’s, meanwhile, is bright and the shared seating is bustling with familes, the young and old and everyone in between. Cole’s serves the sandwich with a small cup of jus and you dip on your own, at Phillipe’s the sandwich is dipped before it’s handed to you. All told I prefer Phillipe’s mustard and dipping style, but the old fashioned really is spectacular and I can easily see someone preferring Cole’s.

Neither the pork at Phillipe’s nor the beef at Cole’s is bad, both are very good, incredibly tasty sandwiches. It’s just that someone on the other side of town does it better. In a bit of symmetry, though, each establishment wins a particular category and the contest of the whole can only be called a draw. While some may see this result as something of a letdown, I can’t see it as anything but the best possible outcome. Think of it! Any one of us can travel to Los Angeles, patronize one or both historical establishments and eat a delicious sandwich. No matter which you choose you are unlikely to walk away unsatisfied. Truly, the winner here is neither Cole’s nor Phillipe’s but your humble sandwich enthusiast.