Honey Roasted Turkey – Gelson’s, East Green Street, Pasadena, CA

Posted on March 4, 2011 by bengrimm

Gelson’s is a chain of upscale supermarkets in Southern California, specializing in fresh foods and upscale tastes. Imagine a more mature and dignified Whole Foods, but geared towards 50-somethings rather than 30-somethings.

The Gelson’s deli section is home to perhaps my favorite salad dish on earth, but they have an enormous selection of Boar’s Head meats and cheeses, standing at the ready for patrons to select either by the pound, or to build their own sandwich, selecting from a smaller selection of breads and accents. For those less finicky, the deli section also offers three to four “ready-made” sandwiches for a smaller fee; meat, lettuce and tomato on bread, to which they will add your choice of condiments and cheese before wrapping the enterprise up for you.

I selected the honey roasted turkey on ciabatta, to which I added baby Swiss and what Gelson’s had listed as “Dijon” mustard. This latter proved to be the downfall of both myself and the sandwich.

As most sandwich practitioners and enthusiasts can attest, Boar’s Head makes quality, consumer-grade meats and cheeses, and the honey roasted turkey and baby Swiss were both outstanding. Shockingly, it was the mustard that ruined this sandwich – something I was previously unaware with anything short of the foul yellow paint that emerges from a squeeze bottle. The Gelson’s “Dijon” was actually coarse stone-ground mustard with intense heat, and applied with a decidedly uneven hand. It completely overwhelmed the subtle and delicate meat and cheese. What’s more it separated from the rest of the sandwich. Every other bite would be chock-a-block full of the mustard, which would land straight on my tongue, burning, as I chewed the rest of the sandwich around it.

Amazingly, this was a sandwich that would have benefitted from mayo, no mustard. Let this serve as a reminder to fans of mustard that, foremost, there is such a thing as “too much,” and secondly, to pair your mustard carefully with the main ingredients, lest they be lost in the shuffle.

Bacon, Egg & Avocado – Made at Home

Posted on March 2, 2011 by Pete

On a recent Saturday morning, after a morning of yoga and other elements of physical culture, I stood in the kitchen wondering what I should have for breakfast. Now, after one’s gotten one’s sutras in order and engaged in bouts of meaningful vigor, it’s important to keep the momentum rolling. That’s not the kind of day where you want to become a lump on the couch. No, it’s a day where you immediately want to set out and achieve great things. And so it was that I started with a couple of sandwiches.

I fried up a few slices of bacon in a skillet, with enough of the fat reserved afterwards to fry a couple of eggs. But before the eggs went in I went for a special touch. I put a few minced cloves of garlic down, waiting a minute for the flavor to develop, then cracking the eggs into the pan directly on top of the garlic. (Truth be told it was more than a few cloves, when it comes to garlic I’ve a heavy hand and offer no apologies.) The egg white held the garlic in place as it cooked, and when the eggs went between wheat toast the garlic came with it. Each sandwich was two slices of bacon, one egg, half an avocado, some cracked black pepper and a few dashes of hot sauce. They were transcendent. A little heat, obscenely rich, and underwritten by delicious, toasted, savory garlic. The avocado was perfectly ripe, offering that instantly-yielding hint of firmness that stood as a subtle middleman to the toast and the egg. An East Coast associate tells me that he has to give up on avocados this time of year, that by the time they get to him they’re completely bereft of flavor. It breaks my heart that he’ll have to wait months to give this sandwich a shot, but I hope when he finds himself in warmer days he does so immediately. This wasn’t a complicated sandwich, it wasn’t revolutionary or an amazing discovery. But it was incredibly delicious, and I suspect that it will quickly find a spot as one of my regulars.

Old Fashion Chicken Salad Sandwich, The Oinkster, Colorado Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

Posted on February 25, 2011 by bengrimm

The Oinkster is an eatery of moderate fame in the north end of Los Angeles proper, in the Eagle Rock area. It is famous for its pastrami sandwiches and its peanut butter-and-jelly cupcakes. I have a particular affinity for neither of these items. I visit The Oinkster frequently, but my “regular” item of purchase is their pulled-pork sandwich, which my esteemed colleague has written about, at length, but which I find more than agreeable.

I felt that my first foray for On Sandwiches should not be a well-traveled road, so I selected the “Old Fashion” Chicken Salad Sandwich. Chicken salad is a very interesting sandwich star: underrepresented, little thought-of (at least on the West Coast, and among those under 40), and potentially pleasing under ideal conditions and when in a particular mood. In my mind, chicken salad has two defining characteristics: the first is that it is the classier older brother of tuna salad; the second is that it is the very definition of the “Oh, ______ sounds good” menu item. An item you see on a menu that you hadn’t considered before sitting down, but darn if that doesn’t sound tasty on a fine Spring afternoon.

So it was with the thought of giving time to the neglected Chicken Salad that I ordered. As is customary for On Sandwiches, I ordered the item as presented on the menu. The only item that gave me pause was the inclusion of pickles. I am traditionally averse to pickles, but pressed ahead, eager to file my first column. My eagerness turned to dread when confronted with the sandwich itself, which, as you can see in the above photo, was fairly inundated with pickle.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must relay the following information: on the menu board at The Oinkster, the ingredients were listed as follows: “pulled roast chicken, housemade (bread and butter pickle), mayonnaise, tomato and onion on focaccia bread.” I had never before encountered the term “bread-and-butter pickle,” so the wording of the sandwich ingredients was beyond baffling to me, particularly when the placement of parentheses were considered. What was housemade? The pulled roast chicken? The bread? Some sort of “butter pickle?” Perhaps it’s my West Coast location, perhaps my picky eating as a child, or maybe due to my unfamiliarity with pickled cucumbers and their briny ilk, but the term had passed me by. All I knew was that it was a chicken salad sandwich, and pickles were involved.

I hefted the sandwich and took a bite, expecting an overwhelming burst of briny, acidic pickle dwarfing everything else. It was at this moment I learned that “bread-and-butter” pickles are sweet, rather than the salty tang of your standard dill. And this element, ladies and gentlemen, is truly what made the entire sandwich sing. I can only imagine how my eyes must have lit up upon that first bite. What an experience! The creamy, savory chicken salad was the yin to the sweet pickles’ yang. Joining the two as a splendid accent was the crisp bite of the onion, which was administered with skilled hand in just the perfect amount. The focaccia bread was, in a word, the perfect vessel, a spectacular firmness without being hard or crunchy, and without soaking up the moistness of the components within. If there was a fault to be found with this sandwich, it was the inclusion of tomato, which truly added nothing to the experience. It has been written about on this blog before, but it has come to the point that the watery fruit is, more often than not, added to a sandwich out of a perceived necessity than paying attention to the needs of the individual sandwich. “Making a sandwich, eh?” the unwashed masses must say to one another, “Better make sure you throw some tomato on there.”

I can scarcely remember a time I have so enjoyed a new sandwich. This experience serves as an excellent reminder to not only myself, but to all of us, that you never know which run-of-the-mill sandwich base may allow an architect to create something around it that will truly knock your socks off.

Vegan Sandwich – Figueroa Produce, N Figueroa St, Los Angeles, CA

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Pete

This was a fine sandwich. The bread was particularly good, large, tender sourdough bringing together fake chicken, fake cheese, lettuce, tomato, and a bit of avocado. I could go on a diatribe about the woeful inadequacy of yellow mustard, but that’s best saved for another day. The “vegenaise” was a more than acceptable substitute for the standard mayo, and that points at what is bothering me about this sandwich. The fake cheese wasn’t particularly good; you could see where it was aiming but it missed the mark. But the fake chicken, like the mayonnaise, was a fine substitute. Sampled alone, outside of the sandwich, it had a pleasing taste and a texture not at all unlike your standard cold cut. This was a good sandwich, I enjoyed eating it and would gladly return to Figueroa Produce and order another one. But even good sandwiches sometimes suggest larger problems.

I like chicken. It’s tasty, it’s versatile, it’s more-or-less good for you, and it makes a damn fine sandwich. You’ll find plenty of sandwiches here built around a chicken breast. But a lot of chicken sandwiches aren’t made with the breast. The same can be said for ham sandwiches, and turkey. These sandwiches are made with cold cuts, with lunch meat. This feels like a bit of a confession, but I don’t particularly care for lunch meat. Think about a chicken, and think about the kind of chicken you might get from the folks at Boar’s Head. Try as I might, I have trouble connecting that to an honest-to-goodness chicken. And that’s what this sandwich points to. What is done to meat that a couple of soybeans can cling together and stand in its place? Through the flavoring, the shaping, the retexturing, how does chicken get so far from itself that it’s just as easy and just as good to have such a drastically different ingredient? How might be the wrong question here, I don’t want the process explained to me. A better question is why? I understand the demands of cost and efficiency, but should we not aspire to higher ground? A sandwich can be a moment of delicious serenity in an otherwise chaotic life. Why let processing and preserving and stabilizing horn in on that?

I know I’m tilting at windmills. Let the supermarket delis exist, let franchise sandwich chains bury processed meat in salt. Let what was once an honest bit of pork sit, hopelessly round and absurdly pink, one side exposed to the air. Let it sit there for years, never going bad. I will be elsewhere, looking for a better sandwich.

Sausage Sandwich – Rosie’s New York Pizza, The Alameda, San Jose

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Pete

Not to keep harping on the previous subject, but I’ve had bad experiences with sausage sandwiches. Good experiences too, but when ordering one the odds that you’ll get a sandwich are as good as the odds that you’ll get a glorified hot dog. But not so at Rosie’s New York Pizza! They solve the sausage sandwich puzzle in a fairly uncommon way, making thin slices of cooked sausage and piling them on a roll with onions, tomatoes, and just enough sauce that you don’t ruin your shirt. It isn’t my preferred way of prepping a sausage sandwich, but it’s still a fine way to do so, and it made for a tasty sandwich. There isn’t too much to say beyond that, but I that’s enough. It has to be enough, doesn’t it? In sandwiches, as in life, though we may seek epiphanies, we fare better when we are satisfied with a few wise words. I may sit down for every sandwich hoping to find the second greatest sandwich in the country, but when all I find is a tasty meal I’m happy to have it.

Buffalo Stew Sandwich, Tommy’s Joynt, Geary Blvd, San Francisco, CA

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Pete

Tommy’s Joynt is a fairly notable establishment, and has been serving their particular brand of comfort food for a long, long time. (The decorations include a flag with only a few dozen stars, a wagon wheel, and an inflatable football promoting the Bud Bowl. Exact age would be hard to pin down.) With age, though, they have yet to find wisdom. I’ll start with the punchline: Tommy’s understanding of sandwiches is about as solid as his spelling. I would try and show more patience, both with Tommy and my own meager joke, but I’m tired of this nonsense. Tired, just dog tired of getting my hopes up for a fine, interesting sandwich, and having those hopes stomped back down by some no-account restaurateur who can’t understand that, at the very least, you eat a sandwich with your hands.

Every so often after I write something about eating a sandwich, someone will point out to me that it could have gone differently. There was a topping bar, they’ll say, or tell me that I could have asked for no cheese. It’s all true, but that isn’t the point of my endeavor. I want to find the wonderful sandwiches where others have dreamed them, exactly how they have dreamed them. To search for dreams, though, leaves one open to finding nightmares.

I ordered the Buffalo Stew Sandwich because it was, by far, the most interesting thing available. Think of it: A sandwich wherein the main ingredient is stew! It’s exciting! The french dip demonstrates that a sandwich can handle liquid, even a considerable amount. I could think to myself how I might go about making a stew sandwich, and I was intensely curious about how the tinkerers at Tommy’s Joynt had carried out such an idea. But my curiosity turned to dismay almost immediately. After slicing a french roll in half, the man making the item took the top half of the roll and sliced it in half again. I was shocked, and as has happened before, that I did not storm out immediately must be chalked up to that state of shock. That extra slice left me in stunned silence, knowing that whatever other steps were taken in preparing this so-called sandwich, they would be a waste. It turned out to be fairly simple, just a ladle full of stew over the bottom of the roll. I was issued a fork and a knife, a rattling mockery of the obvious fact that I could not pick up and eat what had been sold to me as a sandwich.

What I find myself thinking over, again and again, is how this just wasn’t necessary. Get a roll with a good, sturdy crust. Scoop a bit of the bread out of one half, give yourself a pocket to sit your portion of stew in. Serve me that with a few extra napkins and you’ll hear no complaint. It isn’t hard! Tommy could go to sleep at night knowing he understood and respected sandwiches. The extra napkins might cut into the margins a bit, but it’s tough to put a price on a good night’s sleep. The last time this happened I expressed a bit of shame over my own mistakes. Not being careful in my reading of the menu, making unwarranted assumptions, etc. I’ll take on no such blame here. Going forward I will make no changes to how I conduct myself. I am not in the wrong here. Invite me over to watch cricket, I’ll blame you when we sit down and tune in to handball. It maybe a lovely game, but for the love of god, I wanted a sandwich! Is that so much to ask!? I’m getting away from myself. It comes down to this: I believe, and I refuse to stop believing, that a person should be able to walk into an establishment that purports sells sandwiches, order a sandwich, and be served a sandwich.

Pulled Pork – Made at Home

Posted on February 2, 2011 by Pete

In my post of two weeks ago I mentioned that a fellow sandwich enthusiast was rather negative on white bread. This is no small matter to him.

As a small child, I would eat no bread but white bread, and considered wheat bread to be disgusting. And then I was eight years old and I boarded an airplane for the first time. I sat at a window seat, refusing to peel my face away from the glorious spectacle as we peeked above the clouds.

I turned around only when the stewardess asked me which sort of bread I would like on my sandwich. I asked for wheat bread, and I was stunned to hear myself. Minutes later, she brought a turkey on wheat. I loved it. I loved all of it, and I didn’t much care for bleached sugar-bread after that.

I was eight, and I was short and light, and I had yet to discover my first kiss or car or job or lease. But it was at this point that I became a grown-up.

I understand his point, and I sympathize. I certainly look for sandwiches with bold flavors, sandwiches that embark in new, interesting directions. But that is not always what one wants, and that raises the question of whether or not something bland or boring can genuinely be appropriate. That is a valid question, and the answer raises something that makes me consider how I view sandwiches.

I have long said that balance is the most important element of a sandwich. It is not solely a matter of meat or bread or sauce or of any ingredient. A single strong ingredient can save a mediocre sandwich, as seen in sandwiches such as the California Fresh, but a truly great sandwich needs an equal contribution from every element. Or so I thought, anyway. I’m not willing to completely divorce myself from that idea, but I am starting to suspect that it is not truly essential. That is to say, I’m willing to believe that it is possible to have a really great sandwich that isn’t balanced. In place of balance, it seems, one can rely on harmony.

Harmony feels like a cousin to balance, but still quite distinct. Where balance speaks to evenness, harmony simply suggests agreement. Elements that cannot achieve uniform value can aim for concordance, the strong and the weak working together to the benefit of the sandwich. And that is what I found in my pulled pork sandwich. The pork was done in a slow cooker, so sadly it was missing the bark of a genuine smoked shoulder, but a rub heavy on spicy paprika made sure it was plenty flavorful. Tossed lightly in a sweet sauce (I like my pulled pork a little dry), it was a very fine sandwich. The bread was a big part of that. White bread, even when homemade, is still white bread. I admit that, and even though my friend may call me unsophisticated or childish, I will say that is a benefit. What it lacks flavor it gains in simplicity. It plays host to the pork, gladly yielding stardom. If we wish to seriously consider the full spectrum of what can be accomplished with sandwiches, we must not spend our time bemoaning the limits of our ingredients, but instead search for the places within those limits where we can most excel. Go get yourself a loaf of white bread and start walking that tightrope. I hope your heart races and the tastes sing.

Elvis Keith – Ike’s Place, Market St, San Francisco, CA

Posted on January 19, 2011 by Pete

Ike’s Place is a sandwich shop. Plenty of establishments serve sandwiches. In finer dining they can be an afterthought, in something like a bistro they can occupy a respectable portion of the menu, and in something like a deli they can be the only option. The deli is the closest cousin to the sandwich shop, but they differ in attitude. I do not mean to malign the institution of the deli, but many of them present the sandwich as something you might as well eat. There can be a fine selection of breads and meats, but leaving the emphasis on the standard set of options and the interchangeability of ingredients seems misplaced to me. This is not the case at a sandwich shop. Where a deli might list a handful of specials, Ike’s has over 50 named, specific sandwiches on the menu. Where a deli has an obligatory veggie option, Ike’s has a full 20 vegan options and over 30 vegetarian sandwiches.

What I see in this celebration of sandwiches is the realization of a dream. I see years and years of a man making sandwich after sandwich, exploring seemingly contradictory, seeing how he can take a good flavor to great, how far he can push great before it falls apart. Sandwiches at Ike’s come with his Dirty Sauce standard; this is a man who has done the legwork in making amazing things and now wants to share them with the world. And the world is happy to share in those sandwiches: Having arrived in only 2007 Ike’s is in 3 locations currently and will soon add another 3. Their sandwiches are widely praised by both press and public.

When I see a place like Ike’s, where I detect a long road of love culminating in a realized dream, I look at the first listed special. In that sandwich one often finds the favorite child: The sandwich loved longest, made most often, the sandwich in which someone’s dream begins to take form. It was with that in mind that I ordered the Elvis Keith, and it was there that I grew unsettled.

The Elvis Keith proceeds along a fairly predictable but likely satisfying path: Chicken breast, a fine base if ever the was one, teriyaki sauce, a strong sweetness, and wasabi mayo, reigning the sweetness back in. Were it to stop there, you would have a fine balanced sandwich, albeit a simple one. But there is one more ingredient: Swiss cheese. I was wary, but trusting. I ordered the sandwich and retired to a nearby park. The sandwich was good. It could have used more wasabi, but that might just be a matter of taste. All in all it was the simple, balanced sandwich I had suspected it could be, sweet and savory. What struck me is that the cheese was completely lost, obliterated by the teriyaki, unnoticeable. So if it was totally absent in flavor, what was it doing there?

Of the over 100 sandwiches listed on the menu, only three are genuinely free of cheese, two of which are more-or-less the same sandwich. (One has meatballs, the other vegan meatballs.) The third is the Unoriginal, apparently so named because it is nothing but meat on bread. Think about that; whether these sandwiches are all the design of Ike or some process of committee or community, essentially only two are deemed appropriate without cheese. That…I can think of no word for it other than lunacy. It is lunacy. The first conclusion is that a person or persons who love sandwiches has reasonably concluded that less than 3% of the sandwiches in their life should be served without cheese. I refuse to believe that. I simply reject it outright. Ike’s shows a blatant love of sandwiches, a respect and an understanding, and I cannot accept that with that kind of obvious passion comes such a stunning ignorance as to throw cheese onto every damn sandwich they see. I am not unequivocally opposed, I have said in the past that with a skilled hand cheese has its place. But that place cannot be everywhere.

So if it is not madness, it is mandatory. I don’t know exactly when it was established that a sandwich included cheese, but it seems to be the accepted standard. But enough is enough. I am not even suggesting that the default be thrown the other way, to making every sandwich without cheese. I’m just asking that together we take each sandwich as an individual, and ask ourselves whether cheese is needed. Whether you’re making yourself a quick lunch or you own a shop with 100 sandwiches on the menu, we can all take a moment to ask that question. Ask it, and it is in a fair and honest answer that we will find our way to better sandwiches.

Fried Peanut Butter & Banana – Made at Home

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Pete

Can a dead man have a birthday? There is an anniversary of his death, certainly, but to me a birthday seems like an event that requires one be present. In order to celebrate a birthday one has to be alive, at the very least. I suspect, though, that I am in the minority on this matter. Every year, shortly after New Years, January 8th comes around and we are all reminded that it is Elvis’ birthday. Elvis is obviously a titan of a man, and I suppose if anyone is capable of celebrating a birthday from beyond the grave it is him.

Every so often one has to stop and think about how we will be remembered. Like most people, I hope to be remembered as a kind and charitable man, thought of fondly by those I love. But, I confess, I am greedy. I want more than that. I want something that I have seen in Elvis’ legacy. I am jealous not of his estate, or his lasting musical career. I’m jealous of the fact that everyone knows he loved a sandwich. The fried peanut butter and banana sandwich is his. You cannot consider it without thinking of him, it is his essence, presented in sandwich form. He may not be known for the sandwich but the sandwich is absolutely known for him, and I can only dream of taking such an association to my grave.

Seeing as it was the anniversary of the man’s birth, I tried to do his sandwich justice. The bread was a classic American sandwich bread, fresh out of the oven and made by my own hands. A fellow sandwich enthusiast was highly suspicious of my making a sandwich out of white bread. The man is forever on the hunt for flavor and as he told me, “I have yet to find a reason to hold any respect for white bread at all.” “It’s Elvis’ sandwich,” I told him. “What, are you going to use 7-grain?” Peanut butter went down on both slices of bread, sliced banana and a drizzle of honey in the middle. Fried in a skillet in enough butter to make me reconsider what I was doing entirely, the sandwiches came out wonderfully. The buttery, nutty sweetness is a celebratory decadence, a powerful combination that must be eaten a little bit at a time. I kept a tall glass of milk close by and took in the sandwich as it deserved. I may never be so known for any particular item but please, remember me as a man who loved a good sandwich.

Mushroom & Butternut Squash – Skinner’s Loft, Newark Ave, Jersey City, NJ

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Pete

Skinner’s Loft put forth a mushroom sandwich, and I was all too happy to receive it. This is a sandwich that aims high: Roasted portobello mushrooms join butternut squash, grilled red onion, quinoa, spinach, tomatoes, and parmesan fondue all on 7-grain bread. It’s a fair number of ingredients, and some of them seem unnecessary at first glance. But whoever is responsible for this wonder has a skilled hand, and those ingredients come together in a very well balanced harmony. The mushroom and the squash are the stars, of course, and their textures contrast each other perfectly. The tomato and grilled onion bring a sweet note to things, the spinach a contrasting earthiness that echos the mushrooms, and the quinoa and parmesan fondue fill any gaps with a delicious smoothness. Looking at it now and thinking back I only grow more impressed. For nearly every sandwich I eat there is some thought that occurs to me about how it might be made better, but I can think of nothing that would improve this. Every angle is considered, every element properly served. This was a great, great sandwich.

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