Tag Archives: Sandwiches Made For Me

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.

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.

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.

 

 

Nuno – City Sandwich, 9th Ave, New York, NY

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I always feel a bit of guilt when eating at an establishment with a fair amount of hype, and I suspect I’m not alone in that. Shouldn’t I been down some dingy alley, finding the place no one else has heard of? Wouldn’t their sandwich be better than this one? That’s probably nonsense, but the human heart is not quite so straightforward as a fine sandwich. City Sandwich is just the kind of establishment with a grand reputation, and what’s more the Nuno is a particularly praised sandwich. So I was compounding my own sin, if it can be called that, but I’m not going to apologize for even a second, because this is an amazing sandwich.

The Nuno is Portuguese morcela (blood sausage), broccoli rabe, tomato, collard greens and mozzarella with garlic and olive oil. It’s a timeless archetype—meat, greens, tomato, cheese—and it’s timeless for a good reason. The blood sausage and the broccoli rabe is the winning move here, with the sausage bringing a rich, complex flavor and the greens a bright, earthy undertone. The cheese is melted and stringy, mozzarella a fine choice to not overpower the rest of the sandwich, and the bread is crispy with a tender, yielding crumb. While finding an unheralded gem of an establishment or a sandwich is undoubtedly a thrill, you owe it to yourself to just can it and get in line with everyone else. City Sandwich is one of those times; make your way past the growing mass of newspaper clippings and printed blog posts at the door and have a sandwich. You won’t regret it.

de Verdekke – Wafels & Dinges, 65th & Columbus, New York, NY

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Wafels & Dinges is a chain of carts in New York City, ostensibly putting fourth an authentic Belgian waffle experience. I can’t speak to that, having never been to Belgium, but I can say what they put out is delicious. Warm waffles with a subtle sweetness topped with more directly sweet items, it’s a fine evening snack. Even finer is a treat that comes in the form of a sandwich, as you see above.

I don’t think I’ve got more to say about this than that it was delicious, but I should say that several times, and at a less-than-reasonable volume. This was outstanding, with warm crispy waffles and rich, creamy ice cream. This sort of thing is exactly why we eat sandwiches, isn’t it? It need not be fancy, just take the right things, put them together, and you move from good to great.

Veal Parm – Jefferson Diner, Bowling Green Parkway Lake Hopatcong, NJ

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Jefferson Diner is something like famous, having been profiled on at least two basic cable channels and three different shows. It comes off almost like a parody of a diner, the neon and chrome exterior festooned with the kind of giant clock diners have, only it’s even bigger. The menu is where this really gets taken to heart. It’s a small novel, laminated and spiral bound, boasting everything from a 3 egg omelette to Mexican pizza. There are at least 61 sandwiches listed, not including hamburgers. There’s everything from a humble tuna melt to a harrowing so-called club sandwich involving mango, cheddar cheese, and mayonnaise. Offering a range of five dozen sandwiches seems like a great idea, but cold reality of things is that you can’t offer 61 quality sandwiches. It just can’t be done.

Some of the sandwiches at the Jefferson Diner are probably good. Some are probably very good. Just by virtue of volume, there has to be a winner somewhere between the Pastrami Sloppy Joe and the Here’s The Beef Club. Unable to sample the menu’s range, I ordered a simple classic. If you can’t handle the hopscotch that is an honest parm sandwich, I have little hope for your high-wire act.

You can see the results for yourself. Uneven distribution of sauce, a sandwich thrown together that I had to assemble on my own, and so much cheese you’d be forgiven for thinking I’d dropped my napkin in the photo. The veal was a bit dry, dashing any hope of a saving grace. Many of you are no doubt familiar with the platitude “Do one thing well.” I don’t think that’s gospel, but it’s a respectable idea well worth considering. The Jefferson Diner does one thing well, but unfortunately the thing they’ve chosen to do well is “Have a lot of things on the menu.”