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R.W. Apple on the Las Vegas dining scene and has great things to say about Joel Robuchon’s return to haute cuisine. “During the tryouts preceding its official debut, the restaurant served the best food in Las Vegas, by a decisive margin, and some of the very best French food I have ever eaten on this continent.”
Although the sandwich was named so after an 18th century British Earl, its invention dates back to a rabbi who lived in the first century B.C.. In my short history, I’ve eaten more than my fair share of sandwiches and while I can’t consider myself a true connoisseur, the humble sandwich is one of my favorite things to eat and the ultimate in comfort foods.
The keys to a good sandwich are the three Bs: bread, balance, and…ok, there’s only two Bs, but they’re important. Aside from the main ingredient (turkey, tuna, chicken salad, etc.), the bread has the power to make or break a sandwich. The first thing you taste when you take a bite is the bread, so it had better be good and it had better be fresh.
Balance, or how the various parts come together to make a whole sandwich experience, is even more critical than the bread. Too much meat and the sandwich tastes only of meat. (The “famous” delis in NYC are big offenders here…the amount of meat in their sandwiches is way too much. These are sandwiches for showing off, not consumption.) Too much mustard and you overwhelm that beautiful pastrami. The mighty sandwich should not be a lowly conduit for your mustard addiction; why not just eat it straight from the jar? If you’ve got a dry bread, add a slice of tomato, a little extra mayo, or save it for tuna or egg salad. If you’ve got a lot of bread (a Kaiser or sub roll, for example), you’ll probably need more of everything else to balance it out. Make sure the ingredients are distributed evenly throughout the sandwich. You should get a bit of everything in each bite…it’s a BLT, not just an L on toast. If the sandwich maker is doing his job right, you should be able to taste most of the ingredients separately and together at the same time.
Here are a few sandwiches I’ve enjoyed over the years. I haven’t included any of the ones that I regularly make for myself because they’re pretty boring, although IMO, they’re right up there with any of these.
In college, when my friends and I got sick of eating on campus (and had the money to do so), we’d venture across the street to Zio Johno’s, a little Italian place with good, cheap food. At first I just got the spaghetti or lasagna, but one time I tried the Italian sub they offered and I was hooked. The key was the super-sweet sub roll; my measely $3 was enough for both a savory dinner and sweet dessert at the same time. I’ve never found anywhere else that uses bread that sweet.
I’ve lived in NYC for three years now, but I haven’t run across a steak sandwich that rivals the one I used to get on my lunch break at The Brothers’ Deli in Minneapolis. Fried steak, fried onions, and cheddar cheese on a Kaiser roll with a side order of the best potato salad I’ve ever had[1].
Surdyk’s (say “Sir Dicks”) is an institution in Northeast Minneapolis (say “Nordeast”), the finest liquor store and cheese shop around. They also had good croissants (say “Qua Sawn” or “Cross Aunts”) on which they put fresh ham, Swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise. Mmm.
There’s nothing I like more than a good BLT, and Specialty’s in San Francisco has one of the best I’ve had. Secret ingredient: pickles. Also, they didn’t toast the bread, which I usually frown upon, but it worked well anyway.
As for New York, I don’t live close to any good delis, but when I worked in Midtown, I used to zip over to the food court below Grand Central and hit Mendy’s. Their chicken salad is top-notch; the chicken is good quality and it isn’t overwhelmed by the mayonnaise. I’m usually not such a fan of rye bread, but their rye (it’s a light rye) is fantastic and goes very well with the chicken salad. The salami is good too. I usually have half a sandwich with a cup of their chicken noodle.
Do you have a favorite sandwich? Know of any good NYC sandwich spots I should check out?
[1] Although Meg has been making this warm garlic potato salad lately that is a serious contender for the top spot.
Great post about Florent, a restaurant in the Meatpacking District, on the occasion of its 20th anniversary. I love the NYC/SF map mash-up and the photo of James Earl Jones enjoying a cup of coffee and a newspaper at the restaurant. (via eater)
Photos of the new fall menu at Alinea in Chicago, helmed by chef Grant Achatz. Looks weird, decadent, and delicious. (via afb)
Thomas Keller gets the butter for his restaurants from 6 cows in Vermont. The woman who owns them sells more than 80% of her butter to Keller: “When you’re small you can have a relationship with the people who buy your food. The reason I’m not big is because I’m a perfectionist. I’ve got to sell to someone who is the same way.”
Right around 1985 is when American cuisine took hold in NYC…and with it came other changes. “It can be argued that fine dining finally lost its haughty attitude then, that cloches became less important than customer comment cards. A fascination with classic French cooking was forevermore trumped by an insistence on something lighter, more flexible and less hidebound. The trickle of a simpler sensibility from California became a tide. The glories of the Greenmarket took ineradicable root.”
A list of excellent hamburgers to be found in NYC. For more on NYC burgers, check out A Hamburger Today. I still maintain that NYC isn’t a burger town, although with all the recent activity, it may be one soon.
Esquire jumps the gun on the whole end of the year best-of lists thing and names their favorite new restaurants of 2005, with Danny Meyer’s The Modern taking the top spot. Worth reading if only for the sidebar item on “wired and tired” dining trends.
Forbes has a list of 10 chef “tastemakers”, including Thomas Keller, Alain Ducasse, and Grant Achatz.
An intrepid New York magazine reporter waits for meals at various NYC restaurants and reports back as to whether they were worth the wait or not. Shake Shack? Worth the wait. (via meg)
Charlie Trotter bails out of his planned restaurant in the Time Warner Center and it seems that Vongerichten’s steakhouse might not be far behind. As I can attest from a fantastic birthday gift dinner, Per Se is doing quite well.
If you spend any time in restaurants, you might find May We Tell You About Our Specials This Evening? as hilarious as I did.
Subway has gotten rid of their Sub Club cards and stamps, citing the greater ease of fraud these days with color printers and such. Before they stopped it, my dad cashed in his entire supply of cards, eating free for about two weeks.
As discussed previously, there’s a whole lot a restauranting going on in Chelsea on 10th Ave these days. If two is a trend, what do you call all of this?
Epicurious lists ten hated restaurant trends. “To enjoy the brioche bread pudding, it’s really not necessary to know the name of the farm that supplied the eggs.” (via tmn)
Neat article on Charlie Ayers, Google’s former chef, and his future plans to open his own eco-aware restaurant.
Someday we’ll all tell our children about the epic cupcake battles of the early 00s. This one time, I got frosting all over my shirt. It was brutal. (via meg)
Both the NY Times and New York magazine have fall restaurant previews. The southwestern part of Chelsea (+ the Meatpacking) seems to be really jumping these days…lots of stuff happening on 10th Ave (i.e. my walk to Eyebeam most days): Batali, Morimoto, Cookshop, Colicchio, etc. Maybe with all the action over there, maybe the High Line park will work…
Short roundup of NYC hot dogs. My favorite is still Nathan’s, although you can’t beat Crif Dogs for ambiance (cocktail Ms. Pac-Man) and *wrapping a hot dog in bacon*. (via afb)
Wanna go work for Thomas Keller? Per Se is using Craigslist to fill some server openings in the front of the house.
According to a cocktail waitress, how tipping works in NYC bars is a little different than in restaurants. Tourists, particularly foreign ones, tip poorly, if at all, causing some wait staff to pad bar bills to get their tip that way. Another data point in the “is tipping good/bad?” debate, but I could have done without the sense of entitlement on the part of the author. (via tmn)
More on the question of tipping in restaurants: Danny Meyer cautions Thomas Keller against abolishing tipping while stats show that neither customers nor waiters want the practice to end.
An interview with Ruth Reichl, currently the editor of Gourmet, on Garlic and Sapphires, a book about her experiences as a NY Times restaurant critic. (via meg)
Steven Shaw, founder of the excellent food site eGullet, has a new book out called Turning the Tables, an outsider’s inside perspective on food and restaurants. Here’s an excerpt and a review from Wine Spectator.
Following the elimination of tipping at Per Se, an op-ed by Steven Shaw says tipping should be abolished in restaurants. (via tmn) Considering the statistics on tipping, perhaps he’s right. For a less refined take, here’s why Reservoir Dog Mr. Pink doesn’t tip.
The Amateur Gourmet celebrates a year of eating in NYC with a list of his restaurant reviews. Judging by the length of the list, an upgrade from amateur status might be in order.
NYC’s best off-the-menu items from an Eater contest. The winning entry? Spaghetti Bolognese at Peter Luger.
Thomas Keller’s Per Se is getting rid of tipping, opting for a 20% flat rate for service to be split between the entire staff.
Dan Barber on the embraced chaos of working in David Bouley’s kitchen. Barber, who runs the excellent Blue Hill, contributed this essay to the new book, Don’t Try This at Home (eGullet chatter).
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