Sandwich of the Week

Man, I picked a bad time to realize I don’t really have any luggage in my house bigger than a large overnight bag. I’ll make do, but I’m going to have to be Joe Carry-on, and I hate being Joe Carry-on. But whatever, Sandwich of the Week.

The sandwich: Fried chicken sandwich with cheese from Georgia’s Eastside BBQ, 192 Orchard St. in Manhattan.

The construction: A fried chicken breast on a hamburger bun with a slice of melted American cheese. That’s all.

Important background information: This is the second straight Sandwich of the Week from a Lower East Side establishment, and the second straight from Grub Street’s 101 Best Sandwiches list. Last night I fashioned Bono shades for Twitter followers. Has TedQuarters gone all hipster doofus?

Hardly. But crowds and general inconvenience aside, I’ve got no beef with the Lower East Side. It has plenty of reasonably priced tasty eateries and a wide variety of entertainment options. I live in the suburbs so I don’t often get there, but by sheer randomness I wound up in the neighborhood on three straight nights a couple weeks ago, the third of which culminated in this sandwich.

I figure I owe it to you, the TedQuarters reader, to scout out all the Tri-State area’s best sandwiches, and though it does seem now like the Grub Street roster is a bit biased toward trendier spots, it’s without question a good general guide for sandwich suggestions. And when it is corroborated by trusted Twitterers, and when there’s fried chicken in play, well then, you know, duh.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Very good.

The first thing we all need to agree on is that it’s enormously difficult to keep a fried boneless white-meat chicken breast properly moist. And Georgia’s succeeds. So does Chic-Fil-A. Many, many delis around the city do not. (For what it’s worth, I’ve never really understood why so many people seem to think white meat is the superior chicken meat, and why some are willing to actually pay extra for white-meat fried chicken. Dark meat is more moist and flavorful. If I ran a deli — and if I had any business sense I probably should because my sandwiches would be dope — my standard chicken-cutlet sandwich would be made from dark meat. Blow your mind bro.)

Anyway all that said this thing is juicy on the inside and nice and crispy on the outside. The Grub Street description called it “assertively seasoned” though, and I didn’t taste anything too assertive besides salt. Salt is tasty, mind you, and fried-chicken batter doesn’t need to light up the palate to be delicious, but if there were a bevy of secret herbs and spices in there they weren’t really speaking up. I added some of the hot sauce that was on the table, which was reasonably assertive.

The hamburger bun was a hamburger bun. Nothing to complain about, but nothing to write home about either — even if technically my parents will likely read this. It was fresh enough to be soft and not nearly big enough to hold the massive chicken breast, but then no one was really asking it to. No one was pretending this sandwich was about anything but that giant, excellent, juicy, crispy, salty piece of fried chicken (which also had a piece of melted American cheese on it, which was nice).

I get that the idea of this sandwich is to showcase that chicken breast — sort of taking the Chic-Fil-A concept to the next level. But I found myself wanting just a little something more to round this thing out, either in terms of flavor or moisture or texture, something more than a piece of American cheese. And I understand that I’ve been burned before by gilding lilies, specifically in terms of simple fried-chicken sandwiches. But I’m going with my gut here; this could have used some chipotle mayo or something.

There’s nothing in the bylaws of the Sandwich Hall of Fame that says something this simple can’t make it in, but this chicken breast on its own simply was not quite good enough to crack that threshold. Very good, but not historically good.

What it’s worth: $9 and it came with potato chips.

How it rates: 82 out of 100.

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