Category Archives: Sandwich Reviews

Bali Bliss – Veggie Grill

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veggie grill

Veggie Grill is a West coast chain, with locations throughout California and up into Oregon and Washington. It is, as near as I can tell, some kind of attempt to pitch vegetarian cuisine as a sort of All-American comfort food. I want to say “like Applebee’s except made of soy” but I think they’re aiming higher than that. I hope they are. You get the idea. “The perfect indulgence,” they say. Pitching tempeh as an indulgence is a new angle, and I wish them all the best in their quest.

The tempeh is joined on the bun by lettuce, tomato, red onion and chipotle ranch. That’s the official list from the menu, anyway, but what ended up interesting me was the garnish. As you can see square in the center of the above tempeh patty, there’s a bit of relish. It was as tangy and tasty as your standard relish is, and it would have gone a long way into making this something special. Lettuce/tomato/red onion is a storied lineup, but it doesn’t exactly make me think that there’s something special going on. And that’s about the summation of this sandwich; there wasn’t much special going on. A liberal dose of hot sauce brought some flavor to things, but the sandwich itself was a bit bland and rather disappointing. The relish may or may not have saved things, but sitting around and wishing for a condiment is no way to spend a meal, and the Veggie Grill didn’t do much to help me avoid that fate.

Real Cubano – North End Caffe, Highland Ave, Manhattan Beach

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north end (1)

This is what I understand a Cuban sandwich to be. Roast pork (incuding mojo sauce), ham, Swiss cheese, mustard and pickles. In a nod to my understanding, the above sandwich is designated the “Real Cubano” on the menu. That’s quite the bold statement, as many residents of Tampa would insist that a Real Cubano contains a layer of salami. What exactly defines the archetype is a matter of dispute, and I have neither right nor interest in settling the matter. My concern is always the sandwich in front of me, and the sandwich in front of me was delicious.

The pork is the real standout here. As I understand it there’s some smoked salt involved in the roasting. That smoke flavor comes through in the finished product and really adds a stellar layer to the sandwich, turning this from perfectly serviceable to notably good. Everything else is quality and works well together, as you would expect from such a classic archetype, and the result is a very good sandwich. As I don’t particularly care for ham, the Cubans tends to be a pretty rare sandwich for me. All the more delightful, then, when the one I do enjoy happens to be a great one.

Rare Roast Beef – Clementine, Ensley Ave, Los Angeles

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clementine-rareroastbeef

I’ve visited Clementine before, and the quality of what I found the first time around ensured that I would return. This time I elected to try the rare roast beef: top round, roasted in house, matched with a horseradish mustard dressing, marinated onions and arugula on ‘rustic bread.’ I’m never exactly sure what something like ‘rustic’ means, but I in this case it seemed to mean a roll with a respectable but not overly tough crust, and that was a touch that made all the difference. A tough roll could have easily made eating this a chore, with all manner of filling creep. But the crust was chewy yet yielding, and it made the sandwich delightful overall. The beef is tender and juicy, the dressing spicy and flavorful, (but, as always, could have used more horseradish) and the arugula well present. Look at how much lettuce is in that sandwich! That’s no obligatory greenery, friends, that’s a part of the sandwich. The marinated onions were a bit more scarce, sadly, and in a lot of bites of the sandwich they were hardly there at all. In a different sandwich that might have bothered me, but this was fine with or without them.

Enough about what was on the sandwich, I’d like to note what wasn’t: cheese. I’ve spoken many times about the required slice of cheese, the inveterate sense that without a piece of cheese, something isn’t a sandwich. This is hogwash, of course, but I’ve been to more places than I can count who put cheese on everything in sight, practically throwing a slice at you as you walk in the door. Enough. Clementine is smart enough to realize that there’s enough here, that no cheese is necessary, that it would either be lost in the rest of the sandwich or simply gum up the works, and so they leave it off. That was downright decent of them, and I cannot thank them enough.

Atun Escabeche – Churros Calientes, Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles

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churroscalientes

Here is the proper way to cook a fresh piece of tuna: Get a skillet. Get it nice and hot, add a little oil. On the other side of your kitchen, place your tuna fish on a clean plate. Lift the plate and point it at the hot stove. Count to three. Cross the room, shut the burner off, then return to and eat your tuna.

This is not the method followed at Churros Calientes, sadly, much to the detriment of the sandwich. There is a certain tragedy inherent in tuna, as I have noted before, and that’s in a well-cooked piece. Overcooked, the pathos becomes too much to handle. This was a fine piece of meat, and it gained much from a flavorful herb/spice/vinegar marinade. I really wanted to like this sandwich. But all flavor played second to the dry, mealy tuna, the result of much too much heat. There’s no saving something like that. An inherent tragedy is one thing, but a willful one is something very different.

(Though it is outside the purview of this blog, I would like to note that the churros at Churros Calientes are phenomenal. Really stellar churros, well worth going out of your way.)

Lutenica & Ajvar Sandwiches – Made at Home

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al-jarsI had never heard of lutenica and ajvar when they were suggested to me. Native to Eastern Europe, I simply hadn’t come across them. But they came from a noted associate, so though it took me some time to get around to them, now that I’ve done so I’m glad I did. The challenge with these sorts of sandwiches is that if you include too many ingredients you risk losing the focus of the sandwich, and if you don’t add enough you simply haven’t much sandwich. Condiments are condiments for a reason, in other words. But I like a challenge, so ajvar and lutenica sandwiches it was.

al-capreseAjvar is built around roasted red peppers, with plenty of eggplant and garlic to round out the flavors, and chili peppers to give it a backbone of heat. The idea you see above came from a different associate, and is simply switching ajvar into a caprese sandwich in place of the tomato. This resulted in a fine sandwich, with the spicy finish of the ajvar giving it a dimension the standard caprese sandwich doesn’t have. A fine sandwich, but not one that represents a tremendous degree of difficulty. I had bigger plans in store.

al-zuchinniBut first, the lutenica. Built around tomatoes, peppers and carrots, this was sweeter than the ajvar and lacked the heat on the finish. (I understand that lack of heat may be atypical for lutenica, but the contrast between the two served me well.) With concerns over overwhelming the relish in mind, I paired it with some zucchini, panko breaded and baked, and a fried egg. Zucchini don’t have a tremendously assertive flavor, and the egg is resonating on a different level than the relish. This one worked as planned, with the vegetables in the relish playing well with the zucchini and the egg giving the sandwich a rich body it would have otherwise lacked. But this also wasn’t too adventurous. The challenges of building a sandwich around a spread deserved a bold gambit.

al-carrotThat, friends, is a wheat roll with ajvar, roasted carrots, and nutella. Ajvar is sweet and spicy. Chocolate and spice go quite well together. Was it so crazy to believe that the key to a sandwich built around a spread was another spread? But two condiments does not a sandwich make, and that left me considering the middle. Contrast didn’t seem like it would be the right play, something bitter or with too much contrast would just throw off the harmony. There are only a few ingredients here; if they aren’t working together there isn’t much left. So that meant carrots. One of the sweetest of vegetables, a roast carrot had the crucial sugars to play along with the rest of the sandwich, but a nuttiness that brought something the other two were lacking. This was a sandwich that doesn’t sell itself on the first bite, but if you stick with it, there’s something very enjoyable going on. I like this sandwich. I’m not going to make it every day, or even every week, but if I found myself entertaining associates on a Saturday afternoon, I just might put together a few just for the thrill of making people eat chocolate carrots.

al-sausageLastly, a sandwich that is a nod to the fact that these are, ultimately, condiments. That is not a criticism, mind you, just a note that they actually go quite well with any number of things. Here I went with a bed of spinach, and some vegetarian faux-sausage with ajvar piled on one half and lutenica on the other. It was delightful, and any actual sausage would have worked just as well. That’s sort of the point, that most anything would work. Any sandwich enthusiast should be able to put a spicy/sweet condiment to work on a dozen different sandwiches without strain. If you’re willing to sacrifice the spreads as the central element of the sandwich, the possibilities are nearly limitless. I’ve now got two nearly-full jars in my fridge, and a good number of tasty sandwiches in my future.

Ahi Burger – Library Ale House, Main St, Santa Monica

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library alehouse

The tuna steak sandwich might be my absolute favorite thing to order, though it is not my favorite sandwich. It’s a risk/reward proposition, the cut of meat is so tremendously easy to ruin, but so sublime when done well. As you can see by the photo, the folk at Library Ale House know what they’re doing. The slice of tuna in their ahi burger is firm and moist, not quite thick enough for the warm-outside-cool-center that marks the very best sandwiches, but quite good nonetheless. The tuna is joined on the bun by asian slaw with a bit of heat to it, a citrus ponzu dressing and wasabi aioli. That’s not an especially adventuresome lineup, but it’s one that’s certain to be delicious. There’s a sweetness, some spice to counter that, and the slaw is a fine textural contrast.

I try to keep things positive around here, but I cannot speak of tuna fish without noting that someday they will all be gone. As I have noted this before:

Tuna is a fine, fine meat and some day when our grandchildren ask us what it was like I think it will be our great shame to tell them that most of the tuna we ate was dry, coming out of a can only to be drowned in mayonnaise, gussied up into fully moldable slop.

That may be what’s coming, but it is not what is yet here. Today we still have sandwiches like the above, and I am ever so grateful to have them.

Quiznos Lobster Seafood Salad Sandwich – Slummin’ It

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quiznoslobsterseafoodsalad

Though I ate the above sandwich, I had not originally intended to talk about it. I ate it because there’s always the chance that a franchise chain will put out something surprising, and I wasn’t going to talk about it because there’s a much, much (much) better chance they won’t. On Sandwiches is an enterprise of enthusiasm, not one of criticism, and so I avoid talking about many of the disappointing sandwiches I eat. But someone on Twitter requested it, and so here we are.

Sweet mercy, this is awful. The above picture very nearly does the sandwich justice, and it was nice of the Quiznos down the street to let me know right away what I was in for. The national chain was not so kind:

Lobster-Sandwich-DetailI’m not one for “fast food doesn’t look like it does in the ads,” as it strikes me as fruit hanging so low one might trip over it. But the disparity between those two images is too wide for me to ignore. Where do they get the bread used in the photo, I wonder, and do the tell the proprietor of that enterprise what they’re doing with it? I imagine some baker catching sight of the ad one day, recognizing his own bread and weeping softly.

Anyway. To the matter at hand, this sandwich is no good. There is some lobster and seafood salad, but it’s as bland as such a thing can get. Far from the chunks present in the promo photo, It’s minced beyond recognition. That’s not my preferred state, but it can still make for a good sandwich. That wasn’t the case here, of course. What’s most irritating about a case like this is that it wouldn’t take much to save the effort. If your seafood salad lacks flavor, a little lemon juice will boost things up. Fresh cracked black pepper, seemingly included in the promo version, would have gone a very long way here. (Pepper is available at nearly every sandwich franchise, but it is never fresh cracked. The rate of aromatic decay in a peppercorn is one of nature’s great injustices, but it is what it is.) So despite that a halfway decent sandwich was well within reach, Quiznos instead delivers the above. Tragic.
quiznos2In case the seafood might strike you as some kind of aberration, the above is the Prime Rib Peppercorn sandwich. It is exactly as good as it looks.

Bulgogi Cheesesteak (Gogi Hoagie) – Sandwich Shop, W 6th St, Los Angeles

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sandwichshopI’ve talked before about the difference between something like a cafe, where sandwiches are on offer, and a sandwich shop. As you might imagine, I prefer the establishments were sandwiches are the sole focus, but I also hold them to a higher standard. When I came upon one literally named Sandwich Shop, I worried that I might be setting myself up for disappointment. That turned out not to be the case, though, as I found instead the best cheesesteak I’ve ever had.

Thinly shaved rib-eye is the cut of choice, naturally, and it has plenty of the sweet-salty-savory flavor from the bulgogi marinade. The provolone played smoothy in the background, and the jalapeños were just the right amount of heat. The cheesesteak is a simple number, and there’s no great revolution here. Just a few tasty things put together in a classic form, with a very very tasty end result.

Now, I have been known to get bent out of shape over the reinvention of archetypes, and most recently I have objected most strenuously to non-traditional bánh mìs. But I didn’t mind the updated vision on display at the Sandwich Shop, and I’m not sure I can state with certainty why that is. It is entirely possible that I am simply a hypocrite, that my attachment to the bánh mì takes over my head and, having no such attachment to the city of Philadelphia or its chosen emblem, I just don’t care. But there is another reading that is more charitable towards myself, and that’s simply that this was a very good sandwich. Of the two bánh mìs linked above, one fails at being a bánh mì and the other fails at being delicious. Those are fair grounds to cast them aside, in my estimation, and by that standard the sandwich pictured above is more than welcome. I can see no way in which it betrays the fundamental cheesesteak aesthetic, and as such I found it delightful. If some fan of Philadelphia wishes to point out some flaw that I have missed, I encourage them to do so.

Smoked Chicken & Pepper Jam Sandwich – Made at Home

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pepper jamI’ve typed three hundred words about this sandwich, twice. I’ve also deleted them twice because I’ve realized that I’m dancing around an ugly truth: This wasn’t that good. It wasn’t that bad, either, but that’s the most damning thing of all. I’ve long railed against the mediocre here, sandwiches without even the courage to be bad. I should make no efforts to spare myself when that’s where I end up, and that means calling this sandwich what it is: just OK. Pepper jam came as a suggested ingredient via Twitter, and I have to say that it left me stumped for quite some time. Brie was a suggestion I got at the same time, and it was no great labor to produce the delightful brie & lamb meatball sandwich and associated numbers. But pepper jam? If you’re unfamiliar, it’s what it says on the tin, a jam made of sweet and hot peppers. It’s got quite a bit of spice to it, but like any jam the dominant note is sweetness. The flavor isn’t complex, but it struck me as quite hard to pair. I eventually settled on smoked chicken and bacon, because it seemed like it might give it a savory depth that would play well with the sweet. Or well enough, anyway.

I hesitate to say that this was the best I could do with the pepper jam. Some things just aren’t meant to be on sandwiches, but I’m not at all convinced this is one of them. I simply didn’t try as hard as I could, settling for good enough, and for this I beg your forgiveness. I intend to revisit the issue. You deserve more, as readers. The pepper jam deserves more, as pepper jam. I don’t see it as a simple task, but it’s a worthy one. As always, any suggestions are welcome.

Lomo – Marcona Restaurant, Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA

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lomoIt’s not at all clear to me why the lomo comes with a full third of the filling spilled out between the two halves of the sandwich. Perhaps the bakery was short on properly sized rolls. I’ve griped before about being served a sandwich that has already surrendered to falling apart, but there was no fork in sight. It was simply a sandwich, plus a small pile of stuff. Maybe that would be enough to raise my ire on some days, but the day I visited Marcona wasn’t one of them. Of course, the fact that I was served a delicious sandwich goes a long way in mitigating any nosense in the serving. The lomo is spiced pulled pork, parsnips, onion, date mustard, arugula and manchego cheese on ciabatta. The cheese wasn’t really necessary, an issue I’ve discussed at length, but it also wasn’t objectionable. The pork is the real winner here, but really the whole lineup is worth praising. It’s always nice to see something like pulled pork out of its standard context, the date mustard has a pleasantly sweet backbone, the parsnips and onions providing a contrast in texture, but not aggressively so. The arugula has that peppery bite to it, which is more than welcome given the richness of the pork. Each ingredient played its assigned part, and together they made for well more than the sum of their parts. The first quality is balance, the second is harmony, and together they make for an excellent sandwich.