What’s On the Sandwich Named After You at the Local Deli?
Following a prompt from Joanna at Cup of Jo… The local deli or sandwich shop names a sandwich after you. What would be on it? Perhaps another way of asking the question: what’s your favorite sandwich that’s a little bit unusual?
I love a classic BLT, banh mi, or jambon beurre, but a sandwich that is fairly unique to me is tuna salad (made with pickles, pickle juice, and scallions), havarti, lettuce, and tomatoes on good white bread or a kaiser roll. I think that would be The Kottke at the local deli. Either that or something chopped?
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Turkey, apple, and havarti on toast or a criossant. Mayo and spinach for decoration. Named 'What can Brown do for you?'
The Kottke is an amazing name for a sandwich. I also used to do a tuna salad mix with pickles, pickle juice and scallions. Harvati is a great addition I hadn't considered, might have to give that a go.
My go to sandwich, when I don't mind the calories, is a pastrami Rachel - pastrami, Swiss cheese, cole slaw, and Russian dressing on Sissel (light rye) or marble rye - preferably grilled. The preferred pairing is a regular coke with pearl/pebble ice cubes.
If a named sandwich must be unique in some way, I'd swap out the mayo based slaw for a vinegary slaw, like the ones in a banh mi, and maybe add tomato. Maybe as a nod to Rachel from "Friends," you could call it "The One with the Banh Mi Slaw".
This is the reverse but before our local general store got all upscaled, they had a sandwich called the "Foxy Lady" and I always felt special when I ordered it. And foxy!
Toasted everything bagel with plain or other savory cream cheese on the bottom and dijon mustard on the top, cucumber, flavorful tomato slices (so in winter, only sliced cherry tomatoes), spinach or arugula, a fried egg, and sharp cheddar.
(Yes I know that good bagels don't need to be toasted. But they must in this case.)
Mine would be seasonal as it relies heavily on home grown tomatoes, specifically the big ones - giant slicers - a mortgage lifter or maybe an early girl, sliced very thick, seasoned with salt and fresh pepper, a liberal spread of Best Foods or Duke's, on good, lightly toasted white bread, cut on the diagonal, and preferably eaten while standing over the sink.
Fried egg on fluffy white bread, mayo, liberal shake of italian seasoning, and fat slice of tomato.
I've been putting italian dressing (specifically Newman's Own Family Recipe Italian Dressing) on some of my sandwiches lately.
The bread is "Korngeflüster" (whispering wheat), very dark, from a local bakery, topped with my homemade herb butter, Gorgonzola, honey, jalapeños, pickled onions and Maldon salt
Korngeflüster!
I'm sure I'm not the only person wondering what's in the homemade herb butter...
I chop up 2-3 red peppers and a bunch of spring onions and roast them in the oven with olive oil and some salt until lightly browned, then mix that with lots of basil, 4-5 chopped shallots, pepper, thyme, and Maldon sea salt into 500 grams of butter. The trick is to whip the herb butter until it's light and fluffy - that way, it remains spreadable. Delish!
Geez I would eat the heck out of this.
Hear me out: a Reuben but with kimchi.
Ok, so I made an approximation of this for myself today with what I had on hand: Italian semolina bread, homemade Russian dressing, pepper jack, mortadella and kimchi. Came out well!
Also, a grilled cheese with broccoli added to it.
At my college co-op, my standard order was turkey with cheddar and jack grilled (as in, they would put a slice of turkey straight onto the flat top, add cheese on top of it, put another piece of turkey on top of that, and grill it together into a kind of delicious meat and cheese packet) all on toasted sourdough with avocado, mayo, and sprouts. Perfect late-night study food.
My go to lately has been smoked ham, hummus, and sauerkraut. Usually on toasted sourdough, or a nice fluffy flatbread.
That is wild. You are blowing my mind with the juxtaposition of crunchy sauerkraut and creamy hummus. I love both of those. I will have to try that when nobody is around to question my sanity.
The world's best tuna-melt - homemade sourdough bread grilled in a cast-iron skillet with mayo instead of oil. Then melted Havarti cheese, chopped green onions, and albacore tuna salad with kalamata olive spread.
They sell a version of it in Corvallis, Oregon. So if you ever visit Oregon State University, head downtown and grab lunch!
Wait, as a person in the area, where on campus or in town am I supposed to acquire this culinary triumph??
[Edit: somehow missed the link in my excitement. Stopping at Bohdi's ASAP.]
A slight variation on an Italian veggie, that I get all the time. Roasted red peppers, basil, fresh mozzarella, Italian spices, olive oil (that's the standard Italian veggie), add Molinari's salami (the variation). Because I'm from San Francisco, it's on Dutch Crunch.
Not to take this thread in a different direction but all of these interesting sandwiches made me think of having a sandwich that was unexpectedly delicious. A local grocery store had a sandwich for few months that was the following:
Soft Demi Baguette (nothing special)
Deli Turkey
Pickled Jalapeño
Sliced Pear (I dare say of the canned variety)
Arugula
Mayo/dijon
Salty, Savoury, slightly sweet, spicy, peppery from the arugula. I may have been the only fan since they no longer sell it.
Pickled jalapeño can really make life worth living.
My grandpa always had two PBB (Peanut Butter & Bacon) sandwiches for his night watch shift. I'd occasionally get a half. You'd probably have to name it "the grandpa". Makes any day just a bit better :)
Add some bread and butter pickles :)
1. A much better burger: mix ground beef and ground pork, and put that badboy on an english muffin bun.
2. Carved turkey with mayo and cran on a baguette.
3. Polish sausage with cream cheese on a toasted french roll.
That polish sausage sounds wild.
An old friend runs a foodie-style burger place in flagstaff called Diablo burger and they are all served on English Muffins. A lovable way to go.
Jacques Pepin makes them with English muffins when he is "cooking at home" so this has some serious cred behind it.
When she was little (before discovering jamon with comte or brie and butter on baguette) my older daughter hated sandwiches. She loved soup, especially lentil. So I made her a "lentil soup sandwich" which was basically a pile of lentils on whole wheat sourdough. We laughed about that for a long time...
Though it's been on the regular menu for some time, back when they opened, Cutty's (https://www.cuttyfoods.com) only had a Roast Beef 1000, and I believe my wife and I were some of the first people to regularly sub turkey to make a Turkey 1000. As well, we always have them add chard to the sandwich... So a Turkey 1000 with chard (roast turkey, crispy shallots, sharp cheddar, garlicky sauteed chard, 1000 island dressing, on black pepper brioche).
Tired of sandwiches :-) but if you insist :-) The "Roland Tanglao" would be crunchy organic peanut butter and banana on my wife's toast sour dough seed bread, a sandwich I have been eating for over 50 years. Second fav would be any Banh Mi. So good! Blown away in 1998 when I first had a Banh Mi and blown away today!
PBJ, strawberry jam, toasted with a heavy layer of chips for some crunch. Gherkins on the side (possibly dill spear in the sandwich, will need to trial that).
Cream cheese, bacon, tomato between two slices of french toast. Syrup on the side for dipping.
So, my siblings and I actually did this for my mother. For her 80th bday we had the famous Ann Arbor Deli Zingermans (probably known by many on Kottke) name a temporary sandwich after her and put it on the menu. It was brisket, roasted onions, swiss, piquillos, on toasted sourdough, if memory serves. We still have the graphic posters from the event, and memories.
That's awesome. My mom's would probably be liverwurst spread on saltines... and like nobody would order it, haha :(
One sandwich I miss every day is the Old #7 at the Wooden Spoon in Brighton, MI: brie, pickled blueberries, pistachios, and apple cider vinaigrette-tossed arugula on a baguette. It was a beautiful mess. RIP, Wooden Spoon.
So, that one or peanut butter and pickles. :)
For all that's good and roly-poly, as soon as I declare a sandwich delightful, I'm over it.
So here's my pitch:
Folks could shout, "IMA Crunchmaster!" to add salted potato chips and the crunchiest dill pickles ever (in)to the sandwich.
(It's pronounced "I'm a Crunchmaster," but the "IMA" is after my initials.)
...into ANY sandwich that is!
(I missed my typo-editing window 🙈)
Thick toasted sourdough, one side with melted Jarlesberg. The other side with a smashed avocado drizzled with honey and sprinkled with kosher salt and cayenne pepper. Between the two a thick stack (min 3/4") of turkey and optional kewpie mayo.
I love that "What kind of sandwich are you?" holds the record for most comments on any Kottke post. We here are fully invested in the sandwich culture.
Central Market New York summed it up well with this post on Why We Crave Sandwiches.
Because this happened to me by accident, but it wasn't bad (sandwich shop misunderstood the order on the phone): roast beef and cream cheese on an everything bagel
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