Category Archives: Random tidbits

Sandwich investigation continued

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Then Mr. Berg asks if a burger is a sandwich, and even brings in the legal definition and NPR to bring us to a “protein encased in a bread product” (it’s quite the series).

Let me suggest something that may throw a wrench in the works: portability. After all, open-faced sandwiches are not only “stupid,” they have a French name: tartine. And why was the sandwich created if not for portability and ease of ingestion? Clearly, portability is part of this thing, even if it doesn’t end up in the definition.

– Eno Sarris, EnoSarris.com.

Oh, Eno, portability is a big part of this thing. Fear not.

More like Burrito Supreme Court, am I right?

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Given that the term “sandwiches” is not ambiguous and the Lease does not provide a definition of it, this court applies the ordinary meaning of the word. The New Webster Third International Dictionary describes a “sandwich ” as “two thin pieces of bread, usually buttered, with a thin layer (as of meat, cheese, or savory mixture) spread between them.” Under this definition and as dictated by common sense, this court finds that the term “sandwich” is not commonly understood to include burritos, tacos, and quesadillas, which are typically made with a single tortilla and stuffed with a choice filling of meat, rice, and beans….

Further, PR’s reliance on Sabritas is misplaced. PR argues that a flour tortilla qualifies as “bread” and a food product with bread and a filling is a sandwich. In Sabritas, the International Trade Court applied the commercial meaning, rather than the ordinary meaning of bread, to corn tacos shells for purposes of levying tariffs. 22 C.I.T. at 59 (Ct. Int’l Trade 1998). Here, the commercial meaning of “bread” is inapposite where it is the ordinary meaning that is relevant when interpreting an unambiguous contractual term such as “sandwiches.”

– Jeffrey A. Locke, Justice, Superior Court of Massachusetts. White City Shopping Center LP v. PR Restaurants, LLC.

This comes via reader Dan with some help from real-life friend Bill, who points out that there have also been court rulings to determine the definition of the meat “chicken,” among other things. This one came in a case over a leasing contract at a strip mall: A Panera franchise had exclusive rights to sell sandwiches in the mall and its operators apparently bucked when a Qdoba moved in, arguing that Qdoba was also trafficking in sandwiches.

Anyway, the crux of all that legalese is that some judge in Massachusetts ruled in 2006 that a sandwich is not a burrito, which is notable but I would say hardly indisputable. For one thing, the cited dictionary definition of “sandwich” just does not hold up in any to the common sense Locke is so eager to appeal to, and thus seems irrelevant in this instance: “usually buttered”? “thin layer spread between them”? Doesn’t sound like most sandwiches I eat.

I have previously suggested I believe a burrito to be a sandwich, but I’m less certain now that I’ve started working toward a unifying sandwich definition. The NPR proposes something they call the “Neuhaus Rule,” which is “a sandwich is defined as a protein encased in bread product.” But I suspect it’s more complex than that.

Hat tip to Theresa for the NPR link.

Sandwich? of the Week

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Et tu, Ken Dynamo?

I’ll confess that when I posted the photo of the Shackburger this morning I figured the voting to be more one-sided, and this writeup to be something like building up a strawman and knocking him down. But I planned to proceed nonetheless, because I have seen and heard some doubt over the cheeseburger’s sandwichitude in the past and because it always seems like good fun to wreak havoc on a strawman of my own design. Great stress relief, too: Just beat the hell out of that strawman, then maybe set him ablaze and dance in the light of the pyre.

But to my surprise, as of right now 27 percent of TedQuarters readers polled believe a cheeseburger is not a sandwich. And because that number includes some of this site’s most reasonable and respected commenters, I will try to proceed in a more thorough and thoughtful fashion than I previously thought necessary.

The candidate: The Shackburger from Shake Shack, various locations. This particular one came from the Shake Shack on 86th St. between Lexington and 3rd Ave. in Manhattan, which usually lacks the lines associated with the locations at Citi Field and Madison Square Park.

The construction:  A ground-beef patty with American cheese, lettuce, tomato and “Shack sauce” on a hamburger bun.

Arguments for sandwich-hood: It’s meat and cheese between two pieces of bread with lettuce, tomato and dressing.

Counter-arguments: Based on the comments earlier, the principal arguments against a cheeseburger’s being a sandwich seem to that it has its own name — “cheeseburger” — which is not “sandwich” and does not include “sandwich,” and that it comes on a bun. Also, burgers and sandwiches sometimes occupy distinct sections of restaurant menus, though they’re usually nearby.

How it tastes: Delicious. That’s not really up for debate. Though the burger is pretty small, the meat is the focal point: a juicy, tasty and loosely packed mix of ground sirloin and brisket.

The rest of the ingredients play nice: The bun is soft and fresh, the lettuce adds crunch without weighing the thing down or getting too much in the way, the tomato brings a touch of sweetness and moisture, the cheese provides melty, salty goodness and the mayo-based Shack Sauce adds some tangy flavor and creaminess to the mix without overpowering anything.

Here’s what I wrote about the Shackburger in August:

Biting into it, you taste everything at once: crispy lettuce, sweet tomato, tangy shack sauce, creamy cheese, soft bun, juicy meat. It’s damn near elegant. No, screw that; it is elegant.

I’ve long since given up comparing sandwiches to baseball players but I think I’m prepared to make the following call. And this is not a distinction I would bestow upon a sandwich lightly: The Shake Shack burger is the Carlos Beltran of sandwiches. Deemed overrated by some but still appreciated by legions of Mets fans, every element of its game is excellent without being flashy. It will sometimes require a wait — diminishing its value, no doubt — but patient fans can recognize its greatness in center field at Mets games.

What it’s worth: $4.55 plus tax at the Upper East Side location. But when your parents give you a Shake Shack gift card for Christmas, it’s totally free. Thanks, mom and dad!

The verdict: Guys, c’mon. Just… c’mon. It’s meat and cheese with lettuce and tomato on two pieces of bread. Hell, the first thing the Wikipedia page for Hamburger says about the hamburger is that it’s a sandwich, and we all know the Wikipedia is infallible. You pick it up with your hands. At least one origin myth claims it was invented specifically to be eaten while walking.

It’s a sandwich.

So it comes on a bun, yeah. But a lot of chicken sandwiches come on buns, too, and we don’t just call those “chickens,” because chickens are a different thing. Plus plenty of hamburgers come on brioche or kaiser rolls or English muffins. They’re all sandwiches, I’m sorry to say.

No, wait: I’m not sorry to say. I’m happy to say. Hooray for the hamburger, one of our greatest and best sandwiches!

As for the argument that it’s not a sandwich because it’s called a burger, well… that just doesn’t hold up at all. We rarely distinguish a Reuben as a Reuben sandwich, but that is undoubtedly a sandwich, no? And heroes and subs and grinders and po’ boys all pretty clearly fall within the sandwich of spectrum, and yet in most cases are not referred to as sandwiches.

Here’s our man kendynamo:

I have a question. Let’s say you had a bunch of friends over, and they all got hungry, so you said, “no fear dudes, I’ll get us some sandwiches!” Then you come back with a sack of burgers. Don’t you think your friends are going to wonder why you came back with burgers instead of sandwiches?

Yeah, that’d be a bit weird for sure. First off, I’d be a bit disappointed that my friends were so ungracious about all the delicious burgers I just brought them. And mostly, it would be strange of me to say “sandwiches” when I knew I was going out to get a very specific type of sandwiches. It’d be the same thing, I think, if I came back with a bag of BLTs or banh mi.

I mean, say you were having a party and one of your friends was like, “Hey, is it cool if I invite a few people over?” And there’s plenty of booze around and you generally trust your friend’s taste in friends, so you say it’s fine. Then a half hour later, the G-Unit shows up.

Maybe it’s a pleasant surprise — just like it was with the hamburgers — but it’s always going to be weird for someone to use the less-specific descriptor when there’s an easier way to say exactly what to expect. Your friend’s not wrong: The G-Unit is “a few people.” But maybe if you knew the people he was bringing were the G-Unit you would have taken the time in the interim to purge the playlist of your Belle and Sebastian.

In conclusion, a burger is a sandwich. “Sandwich” is not the most specific way to describe a hamburger, but if you were playing 20 Questions and you thought of a hamburger and someone asked you “Is it a sandwich?” you’d have to say yes before he asked you more questions to narrow it down to a burger.

 

Is it a sandwich?

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In the comments section for the first Sandwich of the Week? post (a feature which will heretofore be known as Sandwich? of the Week, thanks to Tom’s suggestion in those same comments), Catsmeat suggested I post a photo of the candidate earlier in the day and allow readers to vote on whether it is a sandwich. This is a good idea. Interactivity!

Of course, by the time I post the poll I will have already eaten the possible sandwich and judged whether it is a sandwich (not necessarily in that order), but I will save my opinions for the later post to avoid swaying the poll results.

Anyway, today’s candidate is the Shackburger from Shake Shack. It looks like this:

The Shackburger is a cheeseburger with lettuce, tomato and “Shack sauce” on a bun. But is it a sandwich?

[poll id=”49″]

 

 

A plea for bacon at Shake Shack

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Drew Magary at Deadspin wonders why Shake Shack does not offer bacon. Language predictably NSFW.

It’s a valid question. Readers of this site must know how I feel about bacon, what with the way I write about bacon like once a week and talk about it in nearly every podcast and even smoked my own bacon that one time. But oddly, I’ve never finished a Shake Shack burger and thought, “man, I really wish that had bacon.”

I’ve certainly wished bacon was available at Shake Shack while looking at the menu board, because immediately when I see a list of burgers my instinct is to scroll down until I see mention of bacon. But everything about the Shackburger feels so perfect when I’m eating it that I never want anything additional that might throw off its delicate balance of awesomeness.

For what it’s worth — and to demonstrate my commitment to bacon cheeseburgers, lest it be doubted — I remember the first time I ever ate a bacon cheeseburger. I was nine years old and eating at the Friendly’s in Manchester, Vermont with my family.

I often ordered bacon cheeseburgers before then. I really liked bacon and I really liked cheeseburgers, but my nine-year-old mind couldn’t process the idea that they might taste good in conjunction, so I’d pull the bacon off the cheeseburger and eat it as a delicious little appetizer. This particular time in Vermont, my brother noticed me pulling the bacon off and convinced me to try the cheeseburger with the bacon in place, and then… well, holy f@#$ing s@#$, that’s synergy.

The Friendly’s is still there, though I think it has been remodeled by now. I even remember where in the Friendly’s we were sitting that evening and how every member of my family was oriented at the table when it happened. Sort of a pivotal moment, you guys.

Sandwich of the Week?

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A new take on an old feature, in part inspired by a conversation I had with Scanwiches creator Jon Chonko before our Q&A session a couple weeks ago. It turned out Jon and I had different definitions of what constituted a “sandwich,” and though I tried, I could not express what I thought made a sandwich a sandwich. I operate with a relatively liberal definition of the term, but I rely mostly on the ol’ Potter Stewart “I know it when I see it” instinct.

Anyway, since I fear much of the sandwich writing on this site is growing stagnant, and since I never intended the sandwich reviews to be mistaken for legitimate food-criticism so much as food appreciation and investigation, I figured I’d endeavor something a bit different in 2012: Eating and discussing various sandwichy foods and determining whether they are in fact sandwiches to work toward a distinct definition of the term.

A lofty, perhaps unobtainable and entirely semantic goal, I realize. But the truth is, nearly every man on my father’s side of my family besides me has been an architect or an engineer (the two exceptions are SCUBA divers, incidentally), and while the math part of those fields failed me, the appreciation for them did not. I suspect my sandwich-making success while employed at the deli came thanks in part to those engineering instincts, what with the sense of proportion and structure necessary to conceive and construct great sandwiches.

So I hope spending more time thinking about the way sandwiches are built — and the way non-sandwiches are built — can provide me further insight into how to build great sandwiches, which I will then also probably detail here because really I just don’t lead that interesting a life.

There’ll still be traditional TedQuarters sandwich reviews when appropriate, of course.

The candidate: K roll from Buddha BBeeQ, 2nd Ave. between 91st and 92nd in Manhattan.

The construction: Large piece of nori (seaweed) wrapped into a cone shape, stuffed with a layer of rice, marinated and grilled Korean beef, and assorted vegetables. I ordered mine “spicy,” which meant there was some thickish red hot sauce in there.

Arguments for sandwich-hood: The K Roll features meat (and vegetables) wrapped in starch and it can be eaten with the hands without too much mess.

Counter-arguments: With or without fish in there it’s pretty clearly sushi, and if you’re extending the definition of “sandwich” to include all sushi that can be picked up with the fingers, you’re heading down a foggy road on a dark night.

How it tastes: Kind of confusing, honestly. I like sushi, and I love the flavor that every Korean beef has that I still can’t put my finger on (seriously, can someone tell me what this flavor is?). But the K Roll takes some getting used to, because the seaweed on the outside brings you to the ocean and hands you a fishing pole, and then you reel in a cow and some pickled vegetables.

The beef tasted good and the proportion of beef to vegetables seemed about right, and it had about the right amount of spice to keep things interesting without getting out of hand.

But the texture seemed off: It required a lot of nori to keep the K Roll intact, so the outside layer was a bit chewier and filmier than I’d hoped. The Wikipedia entry for sushi stresses that temaki rolls — this style — should be eaten immediately after its prepared so the nori doesn’t lose its crispness. I took this home before eating it, so maybe that’s on me. Still, I only live a few blocks away.

There was also a lot of rice here, which works fine with sushi when you’re dipping it in soy sauce and wasabi and in burritos when it gets all mixed up with delicious burrito-stuff, but it made parts of the K Roll kind of dry. They included a packet of soy sauce with the order, so I shot that into the second roll, which made the rice wetter and the whole thing saltier and soy saucier and thus more delicious.

On the whole, pretty good, but not nearly the best thing I’ve had from Buddha BBeeQ, which has so far proven to be one of the better and more interesting takeout places in my new neighborhood.

What it’s worth: The K Roll cost $8. It’s a little small to be a full dinner for a hungry person. Probably the type of thing you want to order with an appetizer, or to share if you’re into the family-style thing. You can figure that stuff out though, you’re smart.

The verdict: Not a sandwich. Still a perfectly pleasant item of food, but I’d say that the nori/rice wrap is not close enough to bread to make this a sandwich. They’re too prevalent a part of the eating experience here, whereas I feel on a sandwich the bread is in most cases a complement to the ingredients contained therein (hence “a turkey sandwich on whole wheat” and not “a whole wheat sandwich with turkey”).

Again: Just because something isn’t a sandwich doesn’t mean it’s not good. Many of my favorite foods are not sandwiches. But since I’m now, as of today, in the business of figuring out what is and what is not a sandwich, we start with the determination that the K Roll decidedly is not.

Top Things of 2011 No. 6: Chicken-fried steak for breakfast

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This one will be brief: I can think of at least four times in 2011 that I ate chicken-fried steak for breakfast, and I’m certain it’s going to happen at least once more before the year is up. Chicken-fried steak is about the single most indulgent food imaginable, and for some reason you’re allowed to count it as breakfast. Oh, and in its breakfast variety it comes smothered in country gravy, which is the best thing.

With apologies to Ron Swanson, I’m not a huge breakfast guy. I love bacon and sausage, but eggs independent of egg sandwiches often make me feel sick (I don’t know why they don’t on a sandwich) and I usually don’t crave anything as sweet as syrup-drenched pancakes or french toast immediately upon waking up. Don’t get me wrong: I like all those foods, and at times I’m sure I’ve proclaimed them all delicious. But if I had to rank my top breakfasts, it’d look like:

1. Things covered in country gravy
(Huge break)
2. Everything else

Basically it’s chicken-fried steak, biscuits and gravy or GTFO as far as I’m concerned. Cardiologists, I assume, feel otherwise, and it is with respect to them (and my wallet) that I eat a bowl of high-fiber cereal most mornings instead of amazing fried steak.

Anyway the point is for some messed-up reason someone decided chicken-fried steak covered in creamy country gravy should count as breakfast, because hell f#@$ing yes this is America.

I know you want to know where in particular you should check out for fried steak. Off the top of my head, the only place I can think of is the Blue Benn Diner in Bennington, Vermont — and there I’m not even sure I’d recommend the chicken-fried steak over the ridiculous variety of other awesome things on the menu.

But basically, if you’re sitting at breakfast and mulling over what to choose and there’s chicken-fried steak on the menu, I think you owe it to yourself to go that direction. C’mon. You only live once, and you’re going to die someday regardless. Might as well eat more fried steak.

Sandwich of the Week

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Meant to write this up earlier but then suddenly Jose Reyes was on the stupid Marlins.

The sandwich: Barbecue pork banh mi from Banh Mi Saigon, 198 Grand Street in Manhattan.

The construction: Pork (in little pieces, not quite ground but definitely not pulled) in some sort of sweet seasoning with a thin slice of Vietnamese ham, cucumbers, jalapenos, cilantro, pickled daikon and carrots on french bread. When I ordered, the man at the counter asked if I wanted it spicy. I said yes, as I always do.

Important background information: I can’t put a finger on exactly what I’m looking for in a banh mi, but I know I’ll know it when I taste it. It has become something of a white whale. Actually, I should amend that: I’m looking for a Southeast Asian-inspired sandwich that ranks among the inner-circle Hall of Famers reviewed on this site, if not necessarily a banh mi proper. I’m pretty sure I’ve had one in the past, from the now-defunct Lower East Side Cambodian restaurant Kampuchea, long before I reviewed sandwiches on the Internet.

(Whoa: A quick Google tangent tells me that the chef at Kampuchea now owns a sandwich shop with two locations in Manhattan called Num Pang that I’ve been meaning to get to. So that just jumped up my list.)

Anyway, I’m soliciting recommendations for great banh mi and banh mi-esque sandwiches. I know the one I’m looking for is out there somewhere. It is not at Banh Mi Saigon, but you’ll find out about that in like three seconds.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Delicious, but I knew immediately that my banh mi hunt would continue.

The flavor here was nearly perfect: Whatever was seasoning the pork had a pleasant sweetness to it that jived with the tanginess of the daikon and the sharpness of the cilantro. And the bread was good too: Crusty, toasty, tasty, bready. fresh-tasting. The whole works. How you want bread to be.

And the single slice of ham, though barely noticeable, presented just a hint of familiar cold-cut flavor, something vaguely grounding: This sandwich reminds you that it is a sandwich. I’m for it.

It wasn’t particularly spicy though. I’ve found there’s a pretty massive variance in the spiciness of jalapenos, and maybe the lot on this sandwich just happened to be underwhelming. More on that in a minute.

And more than anything, I wanted it to be, well, wetter. It was unclear if there was any sort of dressing on the sandwich, and if the pork was in a sauce, not much of it made it onto the bread. Usually dryness is not a problem associated with any type of pork sandwich given the greasiness associated with that meat. And on a banh mi in particular you’d think some of the vegetables might make it almost soggy. Yet this sandwich clearly needed some sort of moistener.

There was a bottle of sriracha on the counter near where I ate, so I squirted a generous serving on the second half of my sandwich, and then whoa nelly. Something about the hot sauce amplified all the awesome flavors of the meats and vegetables, plus gave the whole thing more moisture and spiciness. The sauce catapulted the sandwich to obvious Hall of Fame levels, and the rest of the sandwich was devoured in delirious sandwich frenzy.

What it’s worth: That’s the other thing! This sandwich cost $4.50. That’s like the price of a Big Mac in New York City (Ed. Note: Is it? Has anyone ever had a Big Mac in New York City?), and for that at Banh Mi Saigon you get a huge, fresh, awesome sandwich.

How it rates: 91 out of 100. A deserving Hall of Famer, but not the no-doubt first-ballot inner-circle guy I’m looking for.