Tag Archives: Sandwiches Made For Me

The Special – The Freshly Baked Eatery, N 3rd St, San Jose, CA

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As I stood in The Freshly Baked Eatery and considered my options, an employee behind the counter held up a just-sliced length of sourdough bread. “Fresh and hot,” he told me, “ready to go!” I’m not usually one to rush to order, but bread so fresh as to literally be steaming waits for no man. I spied the words “The Special” and “Sausage” and told the man I’d have that. The Special turned out to be custom sausage (said to be a combination of German, Polish, and Yugoslav cooked in beer), and Swiss cheese, served on sourdough with a crispy crust and a wonderfully chewy interior. Naturally, I got “everything” on it, so it also included mayonnaise, dijon mustard, lettuce, tomato, and red onion. I know I’ve complained about iceberg in the past, but here it played as part of a larger ensemble and I would rank it at unobjectionable. The sausage was plenty tasty, with a unique peppery flavor reminiscent of any number of sausages you’ve had before. There was enough Swiss that you could tell it was there, but not so much as to overwhelm anything. Almost everything about this sandwich was done right, but there was one big issue that nearly derailed everything.

Having been poached in beer, the sausage had a tough casing that couldn’t be snapped by the pressure of an average bite. As a result, taking one bite often meant pulling the whole of the sausage with it. Then you have to try to grab on to it with your fingers and stuff it back in to the sandwich, or rotate the whole thing around and see if your eye teeth are up to the task of slicing through, or just give up, eat the sausage, and then deal with what is essentially a cheese sandwich. None of these options are satisfactory, and simply searing the sausages off in a pan before they’re poached eliminates this problem, as the outside becomes crispy and gives easily to the bite. I’m not quite certain what The Freshly Baked Eatery’s setup is, I know they bake their own bread and roast their own meats, but perhaps there are no actual burners involved. If that’s the case, I would advise them to can the subtle beer flavor and bake the sausage. In any case, equipment limitations and my advice and neither here nor there; ultimately this sandwich just wasn’t everything it could have been. The bread was really quite good, though, and given the fine flavors and balance displayed in the rest of the sandwich, it was still quite enjoyable. Perfect sandwiches are few and far between, and I suspect had I gone with the spicy salami or the garlic herb turkey I wouldn’t have had much about which to complain.

Short Rib Grilled Cheese — Four Cafe, Colorado Blvd., Los Angeles

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It is safe to say that the making of a sandwich into a “______ grilled cheese” or “grilled cheese ________” is, in most instances in 2012, a tawdry gimmick. The “gourmet grilled cheese” sandwich has been played out to the point of near-absurdity in recent years, with many a food truck, sandwich counter, and would-be fine-dining establishment endeavoring to put on airs and reach a clientele by offering an approachable item under the pretense that their sandwich is a Michelin-star spin on the ubiquitous and universal grilled cheese. Usually, these offerings are nothing more than a grilled cheese sandwich with a bunch of “unusual” ingredients thrown in, merely for the sake of things. There is rarely thought involved beyond, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if a grilled cheese sandwich included ______.” The answer these establishments don’t want to hear, however, is that it usually isn’t.

This is all a long-winded means of introduction to a sandwich that is anything but a gimmick. The short rib grilled cheese from Four Cafe is a grilled cheese sandwich only by the default of the literal interpretation of its method of preparation. This sandwich was an endless delight, and would have been none more so had the appending “grilled cheese” been stripped from the board altogether. The pulled and braised beef short ribs were flavorful and moist, but pleasingly firm. The red onions, softened by the grilling, added a pleasing, but not overwhelming snap and brought a welcome addition to the flavor palate. The gruyere cheese was the perfect component to fasten everything together and add texture and oil to the endeavor. The focaccia bread was the perfect container and was indeed grilled to perfection. It all added up to a sandwich that was a true delight to savor.

If the sandwich had a fault — and I don’t believe it did — it would be that the ingredients of the sandwich were purported to include horseradish, although none was significantly detectable. It may have been overwhelmed by the gruyere, or it may have become a part of the short rib. Either way, its presence was not missed in the slightest.

This item is a part of the Winter Menu at Four Cafe. I will do everything in my power to sample it again in the coming weeks, for fear that it will no longer be on offer when the spring rolls around.

Braised Short Rib – Little Chef Counter, N San Pedro Sq, San Jose, CA

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Little Chef Counter is part of San Jose’s San Pedro Square Market, a bid to create something of a public square in downtown San Jose. It sits to one side of a large open room, surrounded by other similar establishments and with little to it but a kitchen and a counter. I mean similar establishments in that they also sell food, because I would speculate that when it comes to quality Little Chef Counter is in a class of its own. Simply put, this is the best non-ethnic sandwich I’ve had in San Jose. That’s not an attempt to damn with faint praise, it’s just that most of San Jose’s stand out sandwiches are of the bánh mì or torta variety. There’s plenty of competition with standard American fare, though, and Little Chef Counter comes out pretty far ahead of any sandwich I’ve had thus far. The sandwich is braised short rib, crispy onions, a horseradish slaw and a cheese sauce. The short rib is juicy and flavorful, a succulent, tender base for the rest of the sandwich. The slaw is crunchy and has plenty of zing via the horseradish, the it joins the fresh fried onions as a wonderfully crispy counter to the texture of the  short rib. Layered on the bread under the short rib, the cheese sauce is rich but never overwhelming, in no risk of drowning out the other ingredients. I have nothing but praise to offer this sandwich; it’s wonderfully balanced and tremendously flavorful. Little Chef Counter may be a sparse in appearance, but the sandwich they put together was a grand success.

Malibu Chicken — Johny’s Kitchen, Cal State Los Angeles

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I am a firm believer that one should never judge an establishment by one bad experience. In nearly all situations, a bad sandwich can be excused by any number of things, and the other items on offer might be superior. Unfortunately, if you keep going back to the same sub-par establishment in hopes they will impress you the next time can sometimes leave you feeling like a fool. It is a dicey proposition.

I endeavored to try out another item at Johny’s Kitchen, feeling that, since they had so many sandwiches on offer, my previous horrible breakfast sandwich experience was perhaps an anomaly. I selected (as is my custom) the most intriguing menu item. In this case, the Malibu Chicken. Advertised as “breaded chicken,” ham, and Swiss cheese on my choice of bread, I placed my order and was not asked a bread preference. Thus, I received a deep-fried frozen chicken patty, a slice of ham thrown upon a grill while the patty fried, tomato, lettuce, and mayonnaise on a sesame seed bun.

I have been having bad luck with bland sandwiches as of late, so we can add another one to that list. The patty was flavorless, there was too much lettuce, and the cheese, mayo and one thin slice of ham were indistinguishable from one another and hardly detectable. Malibu chicken, not in its sandwich form, is a spin on chicken cordon bleu; a means of making a gourmet dish approachable. In that respect, this sandwich is appropriately named. This is a low-class sandwich for a palate so undiscerning as to become negligible.

La Cubana – Casita Chilanga, El Camino Real, Redwood City, CA

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A little while back La Casita Chilanga was the subject of a review by a fellow sandwich enthusiast, and I made a note to give the place a try myself. In order to keep the comparison strict I ordered the same thing, La Cubana. It’s a monster of a sandwich, as wide as the plate it comes on, stuffed with pork leg, ham, breaded beef steak, chorizo, and sausage, in addition to standard issue stuff like tomato, onion, avocado, and a chipotle mayo. From the linked review, I was expecting “an explosion of meat and crunchy grilled flat bread,” and so I was a bit surprised with what I got. Given such a physically wide palate, the Cubana is built not so much up as out. It isn’t a towering sandwich; there’s a lot going on but It handled well and was completely manageable. Altogether, the whole thing seems almost, well, restrained.

This isn’t all upside, as a single portion of avocado was not nearly enough to cover the sandwich. That’s disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. In a sandwich this size, it’s difficult to get coverage the whole way across, and you often end up with ingredients pairing off rather than working all together. You get a bite of ham and steak here, a bit of chorizo and pork there. The ham had been crisped up via hot skillet or flat top, and that made all the difference in both flavor and texture. The sausage listed was, near as I could tell, the humble hot dog, but I note that as an item of interest rather than a fault. In fact, I found the ingredient combinations that presented themselves as I ate to be highly satisfactory, and overall would rate this a fine sandwich.

Pan con Chicharron – Sanguchon, San Francisco Bay Area

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Sanguchon is a Bay Area food truck providing Peruvian street food, and I was excited to try their wares. At a glance, the Pan con Chicharron seems like an extraordinarily appetizing sandwich. Sliced pork loin joins fried yams, salsa criolla and aji rocoto aioli on a roll baked (they say) exclusively for their truck. Those aren’t ingredients you see every day, and though I enjoy a good torta, too much of anything gets old. Salsa criolla is a salsa with a red onion and cilantro base, and aji ricoto is a chili pepper with more heat than a poblano but not as much as hot jalapeño. So you’ve got savory pork,  a crispy sweetness in the yams, a sharp salsa corralling things a little heat playing over everything. That’s a potentially great sandwich, and I strongly suspect that there are days when the sandwich Sanguchon serves lives up to that potential. Sadly, the day that I got my hands on it it failed to meet its mark. I will say that the bread was very good, chewy and with a flavorful crust. There was no disappointment there. I have neither a strong affinity for nor a strong grudge against food trucks,  but I can’t help but wonder if the fact that this sandwich came from a truck had a lot to do with inconsistency. There’s an urgency in serving food from a truck, especially when it’s busy (and it was busy.) People stand around waiting, it doesn’t lend itself to conversation or nursing a drink, and so you want to get them their food as fast as possible. Sometimes that means the food comes out terribly unbalanced, with large, meaty pieces of pork crying out for salsa and aioli, yams delightful when present but unaccounted for in far too many bites. Had someone taken a bit more time putting the sandwich together I suspect it would have been a very different result. Alas, one cannot dine on possibility. It is reality we dig in to, and the reality at Sanguchon was a disappointing sandwich.

Hamburger & Egg Sandwich — Pete’s Blue Chip, Colorado Blvd., Los Angeles

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Pete’s Blue Chip on Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock is a curious establishment. Situated awkwardly, seemingly run-down and with a bizarre menu, it took me an exceedingly long time to figure out which sandwich to order. I decided at last upon the hamburger and egg sandwich, and after having consumed it, I am no less puzzled.

The hamburger and egg sandwich — and it is a sandwich, as it comes on your choice of bread, with “bun” not being an option; that is a separate section of the menu — is a strange creation indeed, at least the one that was constructed for me that day.

The sandwich consisted of a thin hamburger patty, an enormous quantity of scrambled eggs, iceberg lettuce, a dollop of mayonnaise and a truly gargantuan slice of tomato on an English muffin. In the eating, it was exceedingly and perhaps a bit unsurprisingly bland. Not nearly so bland as my egg-and-little-else sandwich from some time ago, but quite bland, indeed.

The strange thing about this sandwich is that so much could have gone right were any of the ingredients swapped out for another. Were the hamburger patty instead a sausage patty; were the lettuce or tomato instead red onion; were the mayonnaise instead Dijon or stone-ground mustard; were the eggs fried rather than scrambled…any of these would have represented an exponential upgrade in both flavor and quality. The concept had unlimited potential. With just one small tweak, this sandwich could have come close to living up to that potential.

Honey Dijon Chicken Sandwich – Union Street Tavern, Union St, Windsor, CT

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I have previously said that including fried ingredients on a sandwich is pass/fail, but that can be a misleading claim. It’s true, but can be overly reductive. After all, isn’t any ingredient in a sandwich pass/fail? It either makes for a better sandwich or it doesn’t. The reason I use it when discussing fried ingredients is that generally speaking, if something is fresh fried than it’s a beneficial ingredient, and if it’s not then it isn’t. What Union Street Tavern demonstrates, sadly, is that the margin for failure is larger than the one for success. The chicken on the honey dijon sandwich was in fact freshly fried, but it was also way overdone, leaving the crust hard and blackened in places. It seems like fine sandwich in concept, breaded chicken breast, honey dijon mustard, swiss cheese, bacon, lettuce and tomato. Additionally, failing on the side of overcooking is a more encouraging failure than a soggy, limp fried chicken breast. One is a failure of execution, the other is a failure of effort, and those are two very different things. I’ve had other food at Union Street, and it has been tasty fare. I’m inclined to think this was just a slip-up, the sort of thing that happens to all but the best restaurants. That was of little comfort to me in the moment, but I won’t hesitate to give Union Street another shot.

Tennessee BBQ Pork — River Belle Terrace, Disneyland

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The River Belle Terrace is located on the border of Frontierland and New Orleans Square in Disneyland and features a few different sandwiches on offer. The Tennessee BBQ Pork is pulled pork in a thick BBQ sauce served on a soft white roll. It comes with a plastic cup of beans and your choice of cold salad.

The pork is tasty enough, with the sauce being about as appetizing as your average inoffensive BBQ sauce. The bread is spongy and unexceptional but holds the contents adequately. It isn’t a chore to eat, isn’t stale and can definitely hit the spot. Anywhere else in the world, this would be a mediocre, unexceptional or even disappointing sandwich. As far as Disneyland sandwiches go (and I have had my fair share), it is above-average. It does not approach the Monte Cristo at the Blue Bayou or the small offerings available during the food and wine festival at Disney’s California Adventure, but if you are at the park and in need of a bite, it will more than suffice.

Kotlet Sandwich – Bijan Bakery & Cafe, Market St, San Jose, CA

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I believe that almost anything can be effectively incorporated into a sandwich, given the right plan and proper execution. There aren’t many things at which I’ll turn my nose up on sight. That said, I often despair at the sight of iceberg lettuce. Don’t get me wrong; like anything else, it has its place. It’s got a lot of water to it, and it it’s pretty crispy, so it works well in spicy situations, or playing against softer ingredients. More often than not, though, it’s not deployed in those situations but instead is just the thoughtless lettuce of the lazy, an unthinking default offering, adding nothing to the sandwich. Combine it with the sight of a mushy slice of hothouse tomato and before your first bite you know that this is a sandwich where nobody was trying very hard. That’s always disappointing, but it’s exceptionally so when other ingredients are above par. The bread at Bijan Bakery was stupendous, a flavorful sourdough with a really substantial crust. The kotlet, a patty of ground meat with a strong dose of turmeric, was also pretty tasty. There was a bit of always-tasty whole grain mustard involved as well, leaving the sandwich a puzzling bundle of contrasting elements. Could this sandwich have been the product of some committee, half its members putting in care and experience, the other half slacking off? Was it assembled by survey, or by mishmash of remaining parts? Perhaps someone died in front of a half-created sandwich, and some uncaring distant relative wrapped things up without a thought for the legacy! I’m sure the real story is much more mundane, but whatever that story is, what sat in front of me was inescapable fact: I had been served a sub-par sandwich.