If the several hundred sandwiches featured on this site haven’t tipped my hand, allow me a confession: I have a grudge against flatbread. It’s tasty enough, don’t get me wrong, even quite tasty at times. But it makes for a lousy sandwich, and so I just can’t get into it. It flops and it rolls and it just isn’t up to the task. So I avoid the stuff. The cost of that, though, is putting large portions of world cuisine out of my mind. If I’m on the hunt for a sandwich, there are substantial genres I don’t really consider.

Luckily, Dr. Sandwich bridges a gap and gives me something I haven’t had in some time. Flavorful, well-cooked schawarma is piled on to a baguette and joined by hummus, a tomato/cucumber salad, cabbage with a bit of mayo, and skhug, a paste made from hot peppers that packs quite a bit of spice. (Flatbread is available, as many establishments do not share my particular biases and are glad to offer wraps and the like.) That’s a classic lineup, the sort of tried-and-true combination that you so often find in foods with a deep history. Thankfully, Dr. Sandwich rescued that combination from the floppy confines of flatbread, and I was all too happy to indulge.