Tag Archives: Reviews by Pete

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.

SlawBeJo – Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop, Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills

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Capriotti’s is a small but growing sandwich chain. They fancy themselves towards the upscale end of things, and they make an effort to live up to that. The beef and turkey are roasted in-house, for example, although likely in the same sort of prepared-product-at-very-specific-company-standards sort of way that Subway bakes their own bread. I’m not 100% certain that’s the case, but the overall quality of the sandwich hints that it is.

The SlawBeJo is roast beef, coleslaw, provolone cheese, Russian dressing and mayo. The mayo jumps out at me. I respect mayo as a technical ingredient, one that brings a structural element to things. It’s there to prevent bread from getting soggy, not for the flavor. With both Russian dressing and coleslaw involved, there’s simply no need for additional mayo. That’s a conceptual error, though the mayonnaise boosters out there are well within their rights to champion their bland glop all they like.

Mayonnaise aside, this has the potential to be a pretty good sandwich. Contrast in textures, potential for a strong but balanced set of flavors, it’s all there. The problem with Capriotti’s isn’t their vision, it’s that their vision is stretched across nearly 100 establishments. The coleslaw is bland, begging for a bit of pepper. The Russian dressing is hardly present, likely the result of some cost-minded portion control. Flavor by way of committee ruined what could have been a very good sandwich, and there’s no excuse for that.

Brisket Sandwich – LA Buns & Company – Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

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LA Buns & Company is an establishment right on the main drag in West Hollywood, a large food stand vending hamburgers, hot dogs, tacos and all the rest of the food one finds oneself craving as night rolls into morning. That’s about when I found myself there, and I was entranced by the brisket sandwich. Tucked in the corner of the menu, there’s a note to the side that reads “Sensational!” That’s quite a boast, and brisket stands out on a menu of quick-cooking, greasy-spoon food.

The sandwich itself is the same sesame-seed roll that holds all the burgers, piled reasonably high with slices of brisket and sauerkraut. I think sauerkraut is an underutilized sandwich ingredient, and it was a welcome addition here. The brisket was tender but a touch dry, but it had a good flavor with a touch of spice and a touch of tomato. All together, though, I don’t think I would hail it as sensational, and that raises the question of how much to hold menu copy against a sandwich. Looking to a menu board for an unbiased recommendation is a fool’s errand, I suppose, but lord knows I’ve taken less reputable advice in search of a great sandwich.

Confit Onion & Feta Chicken Sandwich – Bloom Cafe, Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA

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Confit of onion is a classic technique wherein onions are simmered with white wine, stock and herbs until it reduces to a jam consistency. That’s what was involved here, along with chicken, feta cheese, red bell pepper and some greens. I like this sandwich in concept, but in eating it I couldn’t help but wonder why they didn’t just go with plain old caramelized onions. Onion confit can really be done up royal: homemade stock, anchovies, secret blends of spices, hours on the stove, you can really get into it and produce something special. But if you half-ass the thing you just end up with half-browned onions that are really kind of bland. That’s really too bad, because while the feta and the chicken are a great combination the sandwich was lacking the notes of sweetness needed for a decent harmony. I will say that it was nice of Bloom Cafe to provide the sandwich on regular old toast, and not slather things in mayonnaise where it wasn’t necessary. That indicates to me a strong conceptual awareness, something that makes the failure of execution in the onion confit all the more disappointing.

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.