Category Archives: Sandwich Reviews

Clementine, Ensley Ave, Los Angeles, CA

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The Tony’s Veggie-Luxe at Clementine is corn, red and yellow peppers, mushrooms, garlic and three cheeses grilled on sturdy slices of whole grain bread, and it’s delicious. I was reminded of the sandwich I had at Bread Nolita, the one where the eggplant and the zucchini were hopelessly lost in the cheese. This sandwich was everything that that one could have been, a delightful melange of vegetables, heavy on the sweet but with mushrooms to provide a grounding influence. The cheese was present but restrained, and the bread grilled in a way that walks just to the edge of burnt and stops, peering over that line. That might not be your thing, but I think it provides a wonderful depth of flavor. There’s nothing fancy about this, it’s just a delicious sandwich.

The Fernando doesn’t disappoint either. A toasted ciabatta roll held tinga de pollo, coleslaw, avocado and something they claim to be a secret sauce, but whatever it is it’s lost behind the smokey adobo flavor of the tinga de pollo. There’s spice here, but not too much of it, the coleslaw has a fresh snap, the avocado is as wonderful as avocados are, and the chicken was moist and flavorful. I don’t know that there’s much of anything you could do to make this a better sandwich, and that’s a rare feat. It’s balanced, complete, and tasty as all get-out.

Merguez Sandwich – Got Kosher?, Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

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Merguez is a North African sausage, and the type on offer here is beef, flavored with fennel and cinnamon. That goes on a pretzel roll with harissa, a chili pepper spread that’s really quite delicious, chopped parsley and onions. It’s a simple sandwich, as I believe a good sausage sandwich should be. But the thing about simple sandwiches is that there’s less room for error.

Got Kosher makes their own sausage, their own bread, likely their own harissa as well. I like establishments that do that, both because it makes things more likely to be delicious, and when things fall short I know exactly who is to blame. In this case, the pretzel roll was delicious but the sausage fell short, leaving this sandwich as something less than a success. It’s possible for great bread to carry a mediocre sandwich, but not when there’s this little to back it up. The harrisa was also good, bright and flavorful, but the sausage was dry. It would be tempting to blame the dryness of it being beef, as opposed to pork or some other more moist meat, but the whole point of sausage is you have perfect control over how much fat goes in! If you stuffed it and you cooked it, you’re all out of excuses.

The pretzel roll really was very good, and should I find myself back at Got Kosher I’ll be glad to try something else on the same. It had a deep brown crust and a strong malt flavor, making it all the more sad that the sausage couldn’t keep up its end of the deal.

#1 – Bánh Mì Saigon, Grand St, New York, NY

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The last time I was at Bánh Mì Saigon I was handed a sandwich that had been sitting on the counter for an undetermined amount of time. This is crime enough in and of itself, but it’s especially bad for the bánh mì, and it’s especially especially bad for the bánh mì from Bánh Mì Saigon. This is the sandwich linked at the top, the one that I claim to be the best sandwich in America. And on that day where I was handed one prepared well in advance, it was dry. The bread wasn’t crispy. The vegetables were limp. In short, it wasn’t the sandwich I’ve spent years praising to anyone who would listen. This was deeply, deeply unsettling.

It took me more than a year to get back to Bánh Mì Saigon. I entered the store that day extremely wary, and trying to prepare myself to come before you and offer an apology and a retraction. I would be completely lost in a world in which the No. 1 at Bánh Mì Saigon is not the best sandwich, but if that’s the world I live in then so be it.

It is not the world in which I live. The sandwich I was handed a few weeks ago was warm, the meat tender, the vegetables bright and fresh, the whole thing balanced and flawless. It was everything I could ever hope the sandwich to be, everything I remember. It was perfect.

There is, tragically, a catch. I was there at 10 in the morning, just two hours after they opened. I waited a minute after ordering as my sandwich was prepared fresh, but along the back counter I could see stacks and stacks of baguettes halfway through an assembly-line process. That would be one thing if the place were packed, but at that hour it was limited to myself and two other people. These were sandwiches that were going to sit for a while. How long, no one can say. If you snuck in just before closing you might get a sandwich that was more than eight hours old. That sandwich may or may not be tasty, but it is not the sandwich that I urge associates far and wide to seek out.

The last time I was preaching the virtues of this sandwich to an associate, I tacked on a bit of advice. “Get there early,” I said, without bothering to include an explanation of why. That may have been a mistake on my part, but it breaks my heart to have to offer a conditional endorsement at all. I’ve sent a good number of people to try this sandwich, and every time I’m afraid they will try it and think I have oversold it. “That’s it?” is my biggest concern. It has not yet happened. Yet.

I wish I had a more conclusive answer for you. I can’t rightly say that the sandwich linked at the top of this and every page is no longer the best sandwich. That isn’t true. It’s just a little harder to find. I hate that this is where I leave you, with me left mealy-mouthed and bereft of certainty, assuring you that it really is the best but you should probably show up on Tuesday, bring an umbrella, try to approach the counter at an angle of 40 to 45 degrees, and say a Hail Mary (but not an Our Father) as you walk in the door. But hating where I stand does not move me.

Get there early.

Tongue Sandwich – Attari Sandwich Shop, Westwood Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

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Attari is a well known sandwich shop in the Persian section of West LA, and a survey of the clientele there on a Sunday afternoon indicates that it’s popular with the locals. The tongue sandwich seems to be the item on the menu everybody talks about, and that’s usually enough to get my order.

The sandwich is tongue, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and a light dressing with some fresh herbs. There is very little that’s notable about the fact that this is tongue, and if you think otherwise I suggest you eat more tongue. It’s a fine meat, not at all out of the ordinary in a great many cultures, and if the idea makes you squeamish it’s your loss. The tongue here was juicy and tender, well cooked but lacking in flavor. The dressing was good but there wasn’t nearly enough of it, and so the sandwich was dominated by a generic beef flavor and the pickles. The pickles are substantial and flavorful, but with a healthy portion of bland meat present the balance of the sandwich was off. Spiced properly, this sandwich would have been a knockout.

A sub-par tongue sandwich is especially disappointing, given that rely exclusively on people to prepare it for me, but I take heart in knowing that there’s a lot more tongue out there for me to try. It’s available sliced, stewed or roasted; I’m not likely to have to settle for mediocre tongue for long.

The Bronx Special – Canter’s Deli, Fairfax Ave, Los Angeles, CA

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The last time I went to Canter’s (the real one, not the one in Las Vegas) I spent about two weeks crowing about the Reuben. I’ll still talk it up, given the opportunity. It’s fantastic. But readers are my first responsibility, and so when I entered Canter’s the other day I knew I couldn’t go back to the Reuben. That’s no great tragedy, as the menu offers all manner of other intriguing numbers. This time I went with the Bronx Special: pastrami and chopped liver on rye. The pastrami, as I knew it would be, was fantastic. I had high hopes for the liver, I’ve gotten some really good liver before and I figured Canter’s would know their way around chopped liver. Apparently I figured wrong, as I found the liver here to be dry and bland, and especially unpalatable in comparison to the pastrami. It’s possible that this is something like intentional, and someone didn’t want the liver to outshine the pastrami, but if one flavor risks outshining another the solution isn’t to do away with one of them. A healthy dosage of mustard helped the sandwich out (and thankfully the mustard selection at Canter’s is substantial) but the sandwich shouldn’t have needed that help. I didn’t care for the assembly required nature of things either, but I try not to complain about that too often or too much.

I’m still sold on Canter’s (good lord, that pastrami is good), but on my next visit I’ll steer clear of the liver.

Porchetta Sandwich – Porchetta, E 7th St, New York, NY

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Porchétta [por’ketta] n. roasted pork with crispy skin, highly seasoned with aromatic herbs and spices, garlic, sage, rosemary and wild fennel pollen. Typical plate of the Roman cuisine. Slow cooked Italian fast food.

I admire anyone willing to offer nothing but meat and bread. There are plenty of situations where I would decry such a thing, where the meat clearly can’t carry things, but when you have enough faith in what you’ve roasted that you serve it plain, I’ll gladly line up to try it. I feel like I could list a dozen things that would go well with the porchétta, but that isn’t what’s on offer here. What’s on offer is just meat and bread, and that’s no small risk.

It works. It’s a delicious sandwich. The herbs are front and center, the pork is tender and juicy, the bread is soaking up every bit of juice the meat lets loose, and the crust on the bread is enough that despite a total lack of supporting ingredients, the sandwich feels substantial. It’s not perfect; I felt the skin wasn’t so much crispy as just hard, and there were a few places where I might have thought I was chewing on a small bone. They can be dealt with, though, and everything around them is wonderful. I would say that I’d like to see one ingredient sandwiches more often, but the establishments capable of succeeding with such a sandwich are sparse. Let them instead rest as rare islands, surrounded by a sea smart enough to realize all it has to offer is water.

Fontina & Grilled Eggplant – Bread Nolita, Spring St, New York, NY

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Bread Nolita is another place with quite a reputation, although not quite on the level of City Sandwich. But while City Sandwich lived up to the hype, Bread Nolita was no small disappointment. I went with my standard procedure of ordering the first thing listed on the menu, as explained in more detail here. In this case, that got me a sandwich of Fontina cheese with grilled zucchini and eggplant, arugula and sun-dried tomatoes with balsamic vinaigrette on a baguette. That’s not a bad lineup, and indeed could be quite promising, but the flavors were out of proportion. Eggplant and zucchini are delicate flavors, and they were overwhelmed by the cheese. It’s tough to tell from the photo, but this really came of as more of a grilled cheese sandwich, when it really needed to be a grilled veggie sandwich with cheese. The Baguette had a very hard crust, as quality baguettes do, but in this application that just meant a lot of squeezing. That wasn’t so kind to the eggplant, slippery as it is.

So here again we find a sandwich that could have been spectacular, but wasn’t. The balance and harmony involved in a great sandwich is a fragile thing, and it’s genuinely difficult to achieve. I wanted to like this sandwich, I really did. But should you be put in charge of a Philharmonic, you should hardly expect applause if the best you can muster is a meager scale.

The Baczynski – Veselka, 2nd Ave, New York, NY

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The Baczynski is Polish ham, Ukranian salami, and Podlaski cheese. So that’s two points for Poland and one for the Ukraine, if you’re keeping score. It also comes with a pickled vegetable relish, which as you may note is not pictured above. That’s because it came in a little metal condiment ramekin, tucked off to the side. I don’t care for that kind of presentation in general, because I ordered a sandwich and not a hobby kit. If the establishment things the relish makes it a better sandwich, include it. If not, don’t. Simple. I don’t mean to drone on with complaints, but there wasn’t quite enough of it either, as it all had to fit in a little one ounce container.

What makes all of the above so terrible is that once I did the legwork of including the relish, this was actually a pretty tasty sandwich. The relish was heavy on the cauliflower, not something found in most relishes, and it put just the right twist on what would otherwise be more-or-less a ham and cheese sandwich. But between trying to spread it around myself and finding it too thing when I did so, this sandwich can’t be said to be more but an unrealized success, and I don’t know if there’s a worse kind.

Roasted Beets – Sullivan St Bakery, W 47th St, New York, NY

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Sullivan Street Bakery puts out a number of sandwiches around midday, and all of them follow a basic sort of bit-of-this, bit-of-that style. Nothing piled high, just a few things that go well together on a really good bit of bread. In this case it was roasted golden beets, goat cheese, marinated onions and arugula. All of those go quite well together, with the sweetness of the beets playing off the tangy goat cheese. That said, it was the bread that was the standout here. It had a deep, complex flavor and a chewy crust that lent itself to savoring. It would be easy for a bakery to rest on its laurels when it’s putting out really good bread, to just load a sandwich up with some cold cuts and yellow mustard and say that was good enough. But sandwiches are more than bread, even when the bread is stellar, and thankfully the folk at Sullivan Street Bakery understand that.

Argentine Steak Sandwich – Food Lab, Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

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Food Lab is a sandwich shop, in the sense of an establishment focused almost entirely on sandwiches. There’s a selection of salads to accompany your meal, but this is the kind of place that doesn’t even bother with the often-obligatory side of chips or fries. Sandwiches are what they sell here, so if you can’t be satisfied without a pile of potato to stick your head in, head somewhere else. And that focus is well founded, because they’re putting out excellent stuff. The Argentine steak sandwich was a special of the day, and it’s just the kind of minimal sandwich that comes from someone who knows what they’re doing.

Grilled steak, arugula, and chimichurri sauce. There’s a bit of mayo on the bottom half of the roll, keeping it from getting soggy, but aside from that this is just steak and sauce. That’s a good thing, because steak and chimichurri is a phenomenal combination and there’s no need to fuss with it, just put the two together and let them sing. There wasn’t quite enough sauce here for my liking, and I think the sandwich would have been better served by spreading the sauce on the top half of the roll, rather than putting it directly on top of the steak, but outside of that this was still a darn good sandwich. The roll had a hearty crust, but not one so hearty that a bite sent things sliding all over or required a full pulling, head-twisting effort. I have a special place in my heart for the simple sandwich, and something like this could easily be duplicated at home by any interested enthusiast. I recommend you do so immediately; there’s a delicious sandwich just waiting for you.