At first glance, the Gasol chicken sandwich seems like an incongruous lineup: chicken with melted swiss, roasted green chili, pesto,lettuce and red onion. But notice that it lacks tomato, a clear signal that this wasn’t quite thrown together. Of course, just because something is given a bit of thought doesn’t mean it’s going to work well. As it turns out, the Gasol chicken works quite well. The lettuce is plentiful enough to be an ingredient rather than an afterthought, and combined with the roasted chili and the pesto there are some fresh, bright veggie flavors that pair well with the chicken and the cheese. So what at first appeared to be a disparate gaggle of ingredients turns out to be a harmonious bunch indeed. That’s the magic of sandwiches, I suppose, and I dare say we’re all much better off for it.
Tag Archives: Sandwiches I Have Eaten
Thai Chicken Satay – The Curious Palate, Venice Blvd, Mar Vista
The last time I was at The Curious Palate, I noted that a good number of their sandwiches would be quite a bit of legwork to put together from scratch. This is one of them: thai marinated chicken thighs, peanut sauce, scallions, avocado and a sweet sort of Japanese pickles on 5-grain wheat. Even if one were working with leftover takeout (a too-often neglected route to quality sandwiches) it’s still a stretch. But that’s what cafes and restaurants are for, after all.
Effort aside, this was a sandwich that seemed better in concept than it was in execution. Bites that had everything were quite good, with the scallions and pickles bringing bright tang and sweet notes to the sandwich. Where they were absent, though, the peanut sauce and the avocado made for richness on top of richness with little to balance things out. Too much richness, I have found, leaves a flavor profile that seems dull, almost muddy. That’s disappointing, but overall the sandwich clearly falls under the aim-high-and-miss I find so easy to forgive. Perhaps the next time I’m out for Thai I’ll have half my meal boxed up and give it a shot on my own.
Cold Meatloaf – Clementine, Ensley Ave, Los Angeles
I’ve been to Clementine a number of times, and I usually come away quite pleased. The sandwiches tend to be simple affairs, well executed. That’s usually enough, but the issue with a simple sandwich is that when something goes wrong, there’s little left to support what remains. Take the above. The menu promises sliced meatloaf, caramelized onions, iceberg lettuce and their ‘10,000 lakes’ dressing on country white bread. That sounds like it would be just fine, but the actual sandwich I was served didn’t have much to speak of in the onion department. They weren’t completely absent, there was one bite towards the beginning that reeled me in and another towards the end that assured me I wasn’t crazy, but in between there was little of the sweetness that would have balanced the sandwich out. Without the onion, the remaining sandwich was a bit dry and altogether unbalanced, something from which few sandwiches can recover.
It occurs to me that I’ve never had a genuinely good meatloaf sandwich. I suspect that it’s simply a more difficult task than most expect, and so the general effort tends to miss the mark. That’s a shame. I think that there’s a lot of potential there, but it will have to wait for some other day, in some other sandwich shop.
Shrimp Rich Boy – Mendocino Farms, Los Angeles
The Shrimp Rich Boy is one of Mendocino Farms’ seasonal offerings, a combination of garlic marinated cajun shrimp with a meyer lemon relish aioli, bacon, their ‘krispies,’ candied jalapeño, tomatoes and shredded romaine on a soft white roll. While I could see some purists decrying a ‘take’ on the po’boy, I have no such attachment to this particular archetype and so, provided the resulting sandwich is a good one, I do not mind. And the resulting sandwich at Mendocino Farms is quite good, although it could have been better.
The krispies at Mendocino Farms stand in for fried foods, with mixed results. They’re not so pleasant on the not so fried chicken, but fit in quite well on the turkey confit sandwich I sampled. Here they’re much more towards the fitting in end of things, but they also call to mind the fact that the shrimp in the pseudo-po’boy you’re eating aren’t fried, and that the sandwich would be much better if they were. I get why Mendocino Farms doesn’t deep fry things, but that doesn’t mean they’re not missing out. The shrimp here were cold and firm, and while they were flavorful I think this sandwich would have been a real delight had they been hot and had a crunch to them.
So there was that what-could-have-been and a lopsided stuffed construction, but overall this was a fine sandwich. The candied jalapeño was a nice touch, and a nice change from the pickled and fresh that are commonplace. Mendocino Farms sometimes misses the mark but the sandwiches are never boring, and that’s enough to ensure my return.
Red Miso Short Rib – Lemonade, Barrington Ave, Brentwood
A simple sandwich of mizuna, a peppery green a bit less assertive than arugula, pickled red onion, and ‘red miso short rib,’ which is to say beef short ribs pot-roasted with red miso. Deeper in flavor than white or yellow miso, it brings a saltiness and a rich umami flavor that would overwhelm lesser meats but pairs quite well with short ribs. The use of mizuna struck me as a bit curious, and I actually feel the stronger arugula would have been better suited to the sandwich. Was mizuna there just for the sake of being different, slightly fancier? I would have said yes, were it not for the large pile of mizuna that comes with the sandwich as a side salad. It would appear that mizuna is simply what they prefer to have on hand, and so in the sandwich it goes.
This wasn’t a bad sandwich, but I couldn’t help but feel like the short ribs deserved more. It’s almost too simple, and I think some notes of sweetness or something more spicy would have gone a long way towards perking it up.
Fried Green Tomato BLT – Good Microbrew and Grill, Sunset Blvd, Silver Lake
How’s this for fun: while waiting for an already-ordered sandwich, you see a neighborhood local walk by, point to the establishment behind you, and announce to his associates, “Food’s not great. Really good beer, but food’s not great.” Perhaps the name “Good” is less a boast and more an admission? In any case, soon enough my sandwich arrived and I was able to judge for myself.
The BLT is a simple enough sandwich, and tends to go wrong in one of two areas: too much mayonnaise or bland tomatoes. Neither problem came up here, although with the tomatoes being green and fried I couldn’t help but think they could have been much more than they were. The cornmeal breading wasn’t tremendously flavorful, which is really a shame. The BLT is such a simple sandwich you need to take advantage of every opportunity to get a really great one, and if you’re going to include some fried green tomatoes, it would be best if you didn’t simply coast on their being fried. The sandwich wasn’t bad, just not great. Let that be a lesson to me about not consulting passers by prior to my order.
Italian Bleu Jeans – Heywood, Sunset Blvd, Silver Lake
After having such a perplexing and dispiriting run-in with a grilled cheese at TLT Foods, I decided to see a specialist. Heywood is a grilled cheese shop (shoppe, in fact) that takes much care in sourcing their ingredients, so I figured they would also be keen on ensuring that they all ended up inside the sandwich. And sure enough, they delivered a sandwich in the standard configuration, ingredients surrounded by bread. Thank goodness.
The Italian Bleu Jeans is mozzarella, blue cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and a walnut pesto, and it is as good as that lineup reads. The mozzarella is a rich but unassertive base, and the blue cheese opens things up with a bright tang. The sun-dried tomatoes echo the tang of the blue cheese, and the pesto brings the whole thing together with nutty, herbal notes. The tomato bisque makes a fine side, and dunking the sandwich only added another layer of flavor. In short, it was everything one could ask of a grilled cheese, in both concept and execution.
BBQ Beef Brisket – Stone Oven, Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles
If you’ve got any idea what the avocado in that sandwich is supposed to be doing, you’ve got more insight into sandwiches than I do. I suppose it’s a sign when the menu promises “avocadoes,” but I figured I’d give it a shot anyway. The avocado isn’t exactly objectionable here, it’s just barely noticeable, and there are fewer sins in sandwichdom more grave than wasting an avocado.
Aside from that, the sandwich wasn’t bad. I’ve been somewhat harsh on the so-called “fast casual” sector recently, singling out The Corner and accusing them of shallow tricks designed to impress consumers they see as rubes. I’d like to make clear that I don’t see every mid-sized chain trying to upscale things the same way, and Stone Oven presents a better take on the idea. The bread is the draw, baked in the namesake oven at regular intervals, leaving a fresh, tender loaf for one’s sandwich. In went beef brisket, cheddar, chipotle mayo, onion crisps and avocado. The brisket was capably executed, though far from the heights possible. The avocado may have been lost, but the rest of the ingredients went together well and, when combined with the really good bread, made for quite the tasty sandwich. Moreover, The Corner was on a street in a city, with much better options a stone’s throw away. Stone Oven was in a mall food court, and while “Best Sandwich in a Mall Food Court” isn’t too tall a trophy, it’s a trophy nonetheless.
Short Rib Grilled Cheese – TLT Food, Westwood Blvd, Westwood
I have no idea what happened here. The short rib grilled cheese was listed on the specials board at TLT Food, and having so enjoyed the last sandwich I got there this one sounded delightful. Braised short rib, caramelized red onion, lime-sambal sauce and a blend of cheese all between two pieces of sourdough that were crusted with cotija. That still sounds delightful, and I guess with all those ingredients there’s no room left on the sign for “WARNING: THIS ISN’T ACTUALLY A SANDWICH YOU CAN PICK UP AND EAT WITH YOUR HANDS.”
It just seems so senseless. Surely at some point during the assembly of this sandwich there was a point at which it did not yet have a top. Would that not have been the time to insert the sauce? What purpose does it serve, there on top? It makes the sandwich significantly less pleasant to eat, for one, and it places the sauce farther away from the tongue. It could be an aesthetic choice, I suppose, but surely whoever made this realizes that after properly appreciating one’s sandwich, one tends to consume it?
The sandwich was good, but it could have been so much better if I hadn’t had to grasp it by the edges, or if the sauce were let to mingle with the rest of the ingredients. It could have been good, but tragically the whole experience was laid low by one asinine decision, and that’s a fate no sandwich deserves.
The Troll – The Original Rinaldi’s, N Sepulveda Ave, Manhattan Beach
How aptly named. I enter an establishment, order a sandwich, and I’m served some sort of bread pontoon boat ferrying around a pile of ingredients. The troll. I try to be charitable in my definition of a sandwich. Two pieces of bread, something between then, stacked and intended to be eaten on a horizontal axis. I see this as a definition as expansive as possible without being meaningless, but the boosters of lobster-rolls-as-sandwiches and other similar nonsense have seen it as pedantic, or restricting. But I didn’t settle on this definition just for the sport of it, I settled on it because it’s what fits my idea of what sandwiches are, in their ideal form. The horizontal nature of it is crucial, and the above calamity illustrates why.
The idea behind a sandwich is to bring many things together. This is why we do not set out on a plate a bit of bread, a bit of ham and a bit of cheese and take turns eating each. We put them together because they taste exceptionally good together, and they become more than the sum of their parts. But the togetherness of them, the this-thing-plus-that-thing, in every bite, that’s why horizontal matters. I can close the above not-sandwich. I did close the above not-sandwich, I folded it up and I ate it. It was tasty. Ground turkey, eggplant parm, marinara sauce and mozzarella cheese, it’s a good lineup and the ground turkey is a nice textural contrast. But it didn’t fold cleanly in half, lining up ingredients with the cheese in the middle. It collapsed on itself, leaving a sort of gradient of ingredients not stacked but laid side by side, with bites to one side favoring cheese, to the other turkey, and somewhere in the middle the eggplant. This is no sandwich at all, but instead a slapdash collection, robbing me of the togetherness that defines the sandwich experience.
This happens far more often than I’d like, where someone doesn’t slice the roll all the way through and doesn’t stack so much as stuff, leaving an assemblage that runs contrary to the very point of sandwiches. For the sake of discussion, I try to forgive this, sometimes opening a sandwich and rearranging, sometimes just shrugging because it’s almost good enough. (The Mousa is a recent example of something that could be better.) But this need not be, friends. This need not be. I do not ask that everyone’s sandwich be exotic, complicated, or anything other than what they want it to be. I simply ask that it be assembled with care and with an eye towards the ideal sandwich experience. And that, friends, means stacking.
On Sandwiches 