Steak & Tabbouleh Sandwich – Made at Home

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I happened to have a bit of tabbouleh left over last week, and as I do with so many odds and ends of food, my mind turned to a sandwich. It was quality stuff, fresh and vibrant, heavy on flavor and light on filler. It seemed to me that steak was a decent base for such a thing, and a bit of yogurt with some lemon zest would further round things out. I hoped to find a cheese that would play between the richness of the beef and the herbal notes of the tabbouleh, but in my fear of overpowering cheese I undershot the mark. I wanted a cheese with just enough tang to register, and so I stayed away from anything particularly pungent or bold. Mahón cheese was what I ended up with, and it didn’t quite do the trick. A Spanish cows-milk cheese, it comes in both a semi-soft young version and an older, harder, more flavorful form, and I went with the younger. That was to the detriment of my sandwich, a pity, but it was to the benefit of my knowledge so I can’t complain too much. Overall, the sandwich rated at tasty enough, and the next one should be even better.

 

Kurobuta Pork Belly Banh Mi – Mendocino Farms, Los Angeles, CA

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This is either a pretty good sandwich or it’s a poor imitation of a bánh mì. I don’t think that’s what Mendocino Farms was going for, but as near as I can tell, that’s what they got.

You could disqualify this as a bánh mì strictly based on the fact that it doesn’t come on a baguette. Some might see that as needlessly pedantic, but you can’t expect to run around swapping in ciabatta bread and not have someone call you to account. Even ignoring the bread, though, this comes up short.

The flavor profile is off. Bánh mì come lots of different ways, but they all have a particular savory/vegetable/cilantro/heat balance to them. This sandwich doesn’t have that. The pork is incredibly rich and very, very juicy, which ends up dominating the rest of the sandwich. The sandwich is billed as having a “chili aioli,” and while I’d like to weigh that against buttery Vietnamese mayo, I couldn’t really make it out to be considered. The vegetables suffer the same fate.

But all of that that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad sandwich. The bánh mì depends heavily on balance, but not all sandwiches are so. It is the difference between an ensemble performance and a solo act, a simple difference of vision. If you take this as a pork belly sandwich, it’s delicious. The pork is front and center, and everything else plays quietly in the background, rounding out some bites but being pleasantly absent in others. It’s really high quality pork, rich and savory, and well worth its own sandwich. This is a sandwich well worth eating, but don’t mistake it for a bánh mì.

Pork Loin & Bourbon Apple Sandwich – Made At Home

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If the world seems full of boring or stupid sandwiches, the only reasonable response is to head home and make your own. That’s exactly what I did, and the result was the number you see above. That’s a layer of black bean/garlic hummus, mustard/rosemary pork loin, and bourbon-spiced apples.

I more-or-less winged the recipes here, and I encourage you to do the same. I toasted up some garlic in a dry skillet and mashed it with some black beans, thinning with a little oil until I had a proper hummus. I mixed up some mustard, rosemary and black pepper until it seemed like I had something that was fit for a pork loin, and then I coated and roasted a loin. I sliced up half an apple, threw it in a skillet with a little butter and a little brown sugar, and I finished it with some bourbon. That’s about all there was to it, and I’m happy to say that’s all it needed. I put all that between some slices of hearty wheat and the result was delightful. Mustard pairs quite well with sweet, as anyone who has heaped pickle relish onto a hot dog can tell you. The bourbon brought woody, earthy flavors to temper that sweetness, and the black beans provided a rich background for the pork and the rest of it. This one was a winner, and I suspect it won’t be the long before some more bourbon-spiced apples end up on a sandwich of mine.

I wish I were as delighted with the other sandwich I made, and had I not made the apples number I probably would have been just fine with this. But I did, and so this one immediately became an also-ran, something I’d make if I were feeling a bit lazy or simply didn’t have something better on hand. Nothing fancy here, just the same slices of rosemary/mustard pork loin, some Gruyere cheese, and some marinated artichoke hearts. The artichokes were key here, bringing acidic notes that helped cut both the pork and the cheese. This sandwich wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t the delight the other one was. It’s also a bit less involved in putting together, and as we all know there’s many a day where convenience is at the top of what we look for in a sandwich.

Welcome to the Jungle – Cheviot Farms, National Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

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I don’t remember a tremendous amount about this sandwich. I frequently take notes, but this time I happened not to, and in any event the fact that I can’t remember much about it says more than I might have written down. That’s turkey in there, and I want to say it’s peppered in some way. There’s mustard and mayo, and lettuce and tomato and avocado and sprouts. It wasn’t a bad sandwich, but it was forgettable. A sandwich called “Welcome to the Jungle” really ought to have a hell of an attitude, shouldn’t it? I mean, at the very least, shouldn’t it be interesting?

I feel like I should apologize for picking on Cheviot Farms here, because they’re hardly the only people serving forgettable sandwiches. That’s kind of the point, actually, that I’e had this sandwich 100 times at 100 different establishments, all of them more or less the same. Long-time readers will know how much I hate the mediocre; aim high and fail, aim high and succeed, aim low and succeed. All of those things are fine with me. But to just sort of aim at the middle and hey, that’s where you end up so that’s good enough, there’s no saving that. You’ve got sprouts, pile them on! Give me some earthy flavor. Give me a mustard of some color that doesn’t appear in an eight pack of crayons. You want to pepper the turkey, pepper it! Do something to make your sandwich stand out from every other sandwich.  And here I compound the sin by bothering to tell other people about it! I have pictures of 100 sandwiched about which I have absolutely nothing to say, and I try to spare the reader the tedium, but sometimes I cannot help myself. Enough. There is always another sandwich, a better one, and I hope to bring word of it soon.

Slummin’ It — Big Jack Daddy Burger, Buffalo Wild Wings

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It’s been more than six months since the last installment of Slummin’ It, and that’s because I generally don’t go out of my way to eat terrible sandwiches. Sometimes I find myself in an establishment that promises 1600 calories full of burger (and fries?), a giant stupid pile of the usual lettuce/tomato/beef, plus a helping of pulled pork and some onion rings. I like big, stupid sandwiches in an abstract sense, and occasionally in real life. Buffalo Wild Wings is the kind of crap-on-the-walls establishment that should really excel at big, stupid sandwiches, so I was genuinely looking forward to what they could muster up.

This wasn’t the worst hamburger I’ve ever eaten in my entire life, but it does join a very short list of sandwiches I wasn’t willing to finish. It was dry and bland, the patty too thin to be anything other than well done, a meager offering of two onion rings, the whole thing just a sad display, like some manner of firework spinning in sad circles on the ground, putting out clouds of smoke.

I want to be clear that I did not expect this burger to be good. I expected gusto, not quality. I wasn’t expected pulled pork that had been lovingly smoked, I was expecting something that came out of a bucket and was reheated before being drenched in sauce. I was expecting sub-TGI Friday’s food, and I was still incredibly disappointed. It was just a bad sandwich, and that’s a bottom line that’s hard to escape. Modest or grandiose, at family-run landmark establishments or the Funnest Feedbag in all Fifty States, a bad sandwich is just a bad sandwich.

The Oinkster – Colorado Blvd, Eagle Rock

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My initial experience with Eagle Rock standout The Oinkster was something of a disappointment, but also something of a fluke. My esteemed associate Bill has since returned more than once, highlighting some of the things on offer at what is, by nearly all accounts, an outstanding sandwich shop. I found myself there recently and was able to sample some of those things, and I came away as delighted as anyone. I’m not breaking any new ground in praising the Oinkster, but I do believe the sandwich shop is a special thing and it deserves to be recognized as such. I’ve discussed this before, how many places sell sandwiches but the Sandwich Shop is a different thing entirely, and a good one is to be treasured.

The above sandwich was their special of the moment, a pork patty grilled and put between bread with provolone, peppers and onions, and marinara. There’s not much to complain about there, the pork was moist and tasty, the flavor combination tried-and-true.

The Oinkster sells a burger called The Royale, and it’s piled high with chili, bacon and pastrami. So I’m not sure if I can call the above Oinkster Pastrami the intended ne plus ultra of the menu, it shares the shop’s name and is built to highlight the pastrami upon which they pride themselves, but it isn’t listed first on the menu and it doesn’t carry the same mien that featured sandwiches from other establishments do. None of that has any bearing on its quality, I suppose, and it’s quite good. It’s pastrami, cabbage, grilled onions and Gruyere cheese. That’s tasty, and it’s presented in reasonable proportion, but I think the cheese gets a bit lost. Regardless, it’s tasty as heck and a reasonable contender in a town where “best pastrami” is no small contest.

Truffle Grilled Cheese – Wally’s Cheese Box, Westwood Blvd, Westwood

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Wally’s cheese box is a small shop annexed from Wally’s Wine and Spirits, the selection of cheeses, artisan this and that, and other specialty ingredients having grown too large to be contained within the larger liquor store. I’ve had good experiences eating from places associated with liquor stores, so I was excited to give them a go. The truffle grilled cheese came recommended by the incredibly helpful staff, and who on earth would turn down truffles?

The truffle grilled cheese is what it says on the tin, a grilled cheese made from cheese that is flecked with black truffles. It’s delicious, but as you might expect I was left wanting more truffle. The flavor was there, but it’s already a timid friend and it had a lot of cheese to contend with. Warm, gooey, delicious cheese, but cheese capable of drowning out a truffle nonetheless. The brioche was buttery and crunchy, well grilled but not burnt. All together, that’s a tasty sandwich that’s also a fair deal, but it did leave me wondering what else might be possible. That’s two positives, to my eye. What more could we ask of sandwiches than to both be delicious and spur us on to greater heights?

Choripan – Grand Casino Bakery, Main St, Culver City

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Choripán is traditional South American street food, first recommended to me by respected associates, one of whom gives a good rundown of it and other associated foods here. It’s a simple sandwich – sausage, crusty roll, chimichurri sauce. Sometimes there’s mayonnaise, sometimes fried onions or peppers, or lettuce and tomato. Ordinarily my reaction to such things on the side is to point out that I ordered a sandwich and not a hobby kit, but given the varied nature of the sandwich I’m inclined to forgive it here.

Needless to say, it’s delicious. A dose of fresh, bright chimichurri will make just about anything sing, from sausage to steak to most any meat, and almost certainly something like tofu or even roasted cauliflower. The main trick seems to be knowing that there isn’t much else required, but all the same I think something like a kidney bean humus might make an interesting accompaniment here. The simple pairing of two delicious, quality ingredients is almost cheating, in a way, but given the delicious nature of the outcome I imagine we’re all only too happy to look the other way.

Curried Chicken – Food Lab, Santa Monica Blvd, West Hollywood

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I have discussed Food Lab before, and my experience there left plenty of motivation for a return visit. The menu contains a number of sandwiches that sound delicious, and on this day I elected for the curried chicken sandwich, with lingonberry chutney on raisin walnut bread. It comes as described, with a towering pile of what is effectively curried chicken salad. I’m not at all opposed to sandwiches that are mostly a big pile of one ingredient, but this particular sandwich functions less as a delight and more as an exhibit of the need for balance. The chutney was a sweet counterpart to the chicken where it was present, but with that much chicken there just wasn’t enough of it. Spreading it on the top and bottom would have been a good start. Needless to say, the lower notes of the bread are similarly lost to the chicken, which is too bad. Curried chicken, lingonberry chutney and raisin walnut bread is a fine lineup, but it makes a poor show when the chicken reads the lines for all three.

Albacore Sandwich – The Kitchen, Fountain Ave, Silver Lake, Los Angeles

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I have a special place in my heart for sandwiches built around a quality piece of tuna, and I have an extra special place for delicious sandwiches built around a quality pice of tuna. That’s the albacore sandwich at The Kitchen, a combination of tuna, Asian pear, pickled red onion, mixed greens & wasabi mayo on a well-toasted baguette. That’s a great combination. The sweetness of the pear balances the spice of the wasabi, and the greens bring earthy undertones. That the bite of the red onion is slightly tempered by the pickling is the real signal of quality here.

Tuna is a delicate meat, easily overwhelmed by assertive flavors. The pear and the greens are subtle and play well, while there was restraint in the wasabi that kept it from being too strong. Red onion could easily blast out the rest of the sandwich, but a bit of pickling keeps everything in harmony. The baguette was well toasted, you can see a bit of char on the underside in the photo. That kept things crunchy, and made the bread yield to a bite rather than require a clamp-and-tear maneuver

Simply put, this sandwich had the mark of proper execution from top to bottom, and that’s a wonderful thing. Many a well-conceived sandwich falls short by the time it makes it to the plate, and the times when that doesn’t happen are well worth celebrating.