Busy weekend, very late Sandwich of the Week this week. My apologies. Here we go:

The sandwich: Pork schnitzel sandwich from Schnitzel and Things. It’s a food truck so it has no permanent location; I caught up with the Schnitzel truck on 52nd and Lexington.

The construction: Breaded pork schnitzel with lettuce, tomato and spicy sriracha mayo on a ciabatta roll.

Important background information: I wonder what happens next with the food-truck thing. As I’ve written here before, I’m not sure it’s the fleeting fad so many assume it is — though I suspect food trucks’ popularity does have something to do with the economy and everything. But I imagine it has more to do with the Internet, and smart people figuring out how to use the Internet to communicate where they’re selling their delicious food.

Truth is, food from food trucks is not appreciably cheaper than food from the myriad corporate gourmet deli places all over Midtown, it’s just way more interesting. And as someone who eats a lot of take-out lunches, I’d way rather walk an extra block to find something special — especially if it’s an option I don’t always have — than settle for some bland chicken-and-rice affair from someplace I pass every day. And based on the massive line outside the Schnitzel Truck the day I went, I’m not the only person who feels that way.

So the way I see it, food trucks could continue to provide unique food to hungry people in Manhattan and we enjoy some sort of food-truck Renaissance, ultimately reaching critical mass when there are delicious and exciting food options on practically every corner, rotating throughout the week.

Or — and this is what I fear — corporate types take note of the current trend and figure out a way to make more money out of food trucks than any single enterprise could. This, I imagine, would lead to pervasive identical trucks and rob the consumer of one of the most enjoyable aspects of the individual food truck: its novelty.

In any case, I’m going to keep enjoying our ability to find delicious and unusual food on the street as long as it lasts.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: F@#$ing amazing.

The breaded, fried pork — the schnitzel — is clearly the centerpiece of the sandwich. Shocking, I know. But somehow the breaded, fried pork actually tasted better than I expected, which is amazing considering the expectations I hold for any breaded, fried meat product.

The meat is pounded thin and tender and the breading is light, crispy and flavorful. Oh, and there’s a ton of schnitzel on the schnitzel sandwich. So much that when I opened the thing up, I thought, “OK, the reasonable thing to do would be to cut this in two and save half for dinner.” Then when I bit into it, I thought, “OK, well clearly I have to eat more than half, but I’ll try to save a little for a late-day snack.” And then after that, I have no idea what I thought because the pork was so overwhelming that I could concentrate on nothing but enjoying the pork.

The rest of the stuff on the sandwich is probably good, too, but it’s a little like trying to assess the mid-90s Bulls who were not Michael Jordan. The sriracha mayo is like Scottie Pippen. I’m pretty sure it was also really good, but it was hard to tell if it helped make the schnitzel taste more awesome or if it just itself tasted more awesome because it played with the schnitzel.

The ciabatta bread was like Dennis Rodman, in that I felt certain it could be an important foundational piece to many good sandwiches but I couldn’t be sure it was good enough to make a sandwich great all on its own. I mean, it was really good at what it did — a nice flaky crust, soft and chewy on the inside — but obviously it’s bread and so it can’t really carry a sandwich. Like Rodman, it was doing the important stuff to make the other parts of the sandwich look great, but it wasn’t itself much of a point-scorer. Also — little-known fact — this particular ciabatta hero roll also enjoyed a brief whirlwind marriage to Carmen Electra.

The lettuce and tomato were like Luc Longley and Steve Kerr because they were also there.

Clearly this metaphor sucks, but the point is that the schnitzel is a transcendent sandwich superstar likely to make any ingredients around it seem awesome. This certainly wasn’t the fanciest or most intricately constructed sandwich I’ve had, but the quality was good enough to push it into the Hall of Fame.

What it’s worth: It cost $8 and about a half-mile walk. Then it cost me the second half of my workday, because I fell into a solid food coma after I finished it.

How it rates: 91 out of 100. A deserving Hall of Famer.

This week’s sandwich — which, as I already confessed, I ate last week — came to me on a tip from a reader like you.

Well, he’s not exactly like you, since we’re all unique and everything. But he is also a reader, and presumably if you’re here, you are as well. The particular reader in question, Mark, writes an excellent (albeit infrequently updated) Giants blog called Bluenatic that you should probably check out.

Mark discovered this sandwich near his workplace and tipped me off via email. You can and should do the same, either by sending a note to tberg@sny.tv or by using the contact form in the tab to the above right. Especially — especially — if you know of a sandwich as good as this one that is reasonably accessible from Midtown Manhattan or Westchester. This region has no shortage of great sandwiches and so, in theory, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a new sandwich to write up every week. But I am limited in scope by my own web-browsing and traveling habits, so I invite you to shake up my whole sandwich paradigm.

The sandwich: Grilled Pork Banh Mi from the Chicken House on 36th street between 7th and 8th in Manhattan.

The construction: A hot, crusty baguette with pork, mayo, sriracha sauce and a bevy of vegetables and herbs that I was too hungry to entirely sort through. Carrots and lettuce were visible, and I’m sure I tasted cilantro and basil.

Important background information: Chicken House isn’t much to look at. It’s a narrow takeout fried-chicken joint with a half-counter and maybe four or five bar stools for the eat-in set. In the 10 minutes I spent waiting on the banh mi, no one else that came in ordered a sandwich. On this particular day, at least, nearly all Chicken House’s business was in fried chicken and fish.

But I could tell from the care that the man at the counter put into my sandwich that it was going to be good. I couldn’t even see all of what he was doing back there, but the concentration on his face and deliberateness with which he piled on the ingredients boded well for the product.

Maybe my own deli experience gave me a radar for fellow great sandwich creators, or maybe we, the sandwich heroes, have some sort of unspoken cosmic connection and he could see in my eyes how badly I wanted a carefully constructed and delicious sandwich. Either way, this was a sandwich made with love — the love of sandwiches. I shouldn’t stereotype, but that type of passion wasn’t entirely what I expected from a quick-serve takeout fried-chicken place in Midtown (not that there’s anything wrong with takeout fried-chicken).

What it looks like (inside wax paper and a plastic bag):

How it tastes: If you read this site with any regularity, you know me well enough to know I don’t liberally throw around the term “party in my mouth.” Actually, I searched this site for “party in my mouth” and found that I’ve only used it once before in all my sandwich-reviewing — in a remarkably similar construction, and also referring to a Vietnamese sandwich.

Truth is, there is some flavor — a combination of flavors, I think — unique to Southeast Asian cuisine that I can’t entirely put my finger on except to say that it’s amazing. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the basil combined with chili, but there’s something else in there too. I’ve noticed it in Thai, Vietnamese and Cambodian foods now. Has anyone ever had Laotian cuisine? Is it also awesome?

Anyway, this sandwich had that flavor, and it’s still good. Sorry I can’t be more specific. Also, the array of vegetables added some crunch, and bread was excellent. Warm, tasty, crusty, plentiful. Real good foundation for a sandwich.

My only quibble with this pork banh mi, though — and the only thing keeping it out of the Sandwich Hall of Fame — was that there wasn’t quite enough meat. The pork that was on there was moist and delicious — it definitely tasted char-grilled (though I have no idea what the mechanics of that would be in such a small indoor space). But I like a lot of meat, and this sandwich was mostly bread and vegetables. Delicious bread and vegetables, mind you, but I need protein to power my inactive lifestyle.

What it’s worth: That’s the other thing! This sandwich — which was huge, even without a lot of meat — cost only $6. That’s a great deal for anywhere, but for Midtown it’s damn-near insane. Granted, it also cost me one subway trip on my Metrocard, but that’s only because I was too hungry to walk there.

The rating: 89 out of 100. As close to the Hall of Fame as you can be without getting in. And I’m tempted to try it again in case the short amount of meat was a one-time hiccup.

You probably won’t be able to recreate this sandwich at home. After my pulled-pork experiment last month, I ate obscene amounts of pulled pork and still wound up freezing a bunch of it.

I dug it out of the freezer last week in an attempt to make chili, substituting it for turkey and vaguely following this recipe, in that chili recipes are ever really followed.

Problem — I guess I should say “problem” — was that I wildly underestimated how much pulled pork I was working with, not to mention pulled pork’s surprisingly absorbent nature. I wound up with a giant pot full of chili-inspired pork glop, undoubtedly delicious but not soupy or stewy enough to really be called chili.

For the purposes of this write-up I’ll still refer to it as “chili” because “pork glop” doesn’t sound overwhelmingly appetizing and I can’t think of any way to accurately describe the stuff that does. Plus, consistency issues aside, it’s still flavored like chili, which is what mattered most for the purposes of the following sandwich.

The sandwich: Chili-cheeseburger from the analog Tedquarters in Westchester.

The construction: Burger with cheddar cheese, pork chili and a dollop of sour cream on a toasted challah roll.

The sour cream and chili I had already. The ground beef, cheese, and rolls I bought at the Grand Central Market, before my commute and after a late-day sandwich epiphany at work.

Important background information: I’ve mentioned this before, but I really can’t stress it enough: You really want the fattiest beef you can find for good burgers. In-N-Out uses chuck that’s 40% fat, which is way, way fattier than you can normally find at the supermarket. Five Guys uses beef with 20% fat, which is about the upper limit of reasonable.

I was working with ground sirloin here, which — while more impressive-sounding to guests, or something — means it was a lower fat content than I’d like to use for burgers, probably about 10% or so. I seasoned it with a little black pepper. Sometimes I go overboard with seasoning the beef and in this case I didn’t want the burger to overwhelm the chili.

“Seasoning the beef” sounds like it could be a euphemism, though I have no idea what for. In this instance I mean it literally.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Eh, pretty good. I could have done better, I think.

For one thing, I overcooked the burgers a little bit. It was my first time cooking burgers on the stove for the season, and I guess I overshot how long I’d need to grill them on there, accustomed as I am to the barbecue. But that’s not a great excuse; truth is I just didn’t time it right. I wound up with burgers that were decidedly well-done, and I’d have preferred them on the rare side of medium.

The chili was, like I said, spicy and delicious, and definitely worked really well on the burger. But as I feared, the flavor of the chili was a tiny bit overwhelmed by the burger — not because I overseasoned the meat, but because I probably made the burgers a bit too thick (if that’s even possible). The cheddar cheese, too, got lost in the mix. The slices were real thin, and I’m not certain I even tasted it with all the other stuff going on.

My wife raised her eyebrows a bit about the presence of the sour cream, but I figured if I like sour cream on chili, I should also like a little on a chili-cheeseburger. I was right — it added some moisture (remember: both the chili and burger were drier than I’d like), combined well with the chili, and gave the whole thing a bite that it didn’t get from the cheddar.

I chose the challah rolls by default — they were the only roughly burger-sized roll at the Grand Central Market and I really didn’t feel like stopping somewhere else. But that turned out fortuitous, as the sweetness of the challah added a whole different dimension to the burger. Really, the rolls were probably the best part. Hat tip to Zaro’s.

All in all it was good, but it didn’t match my hopes. Give it a 9 for inspiration and a 5 for execution, which is pretty much the story of my life.

What it’s worth: Not easy to estimate since I had some of the ingredients already, and bought way more than two slices of cheese and everything (plus it was almost a full week ago now). I think these things cost me about $6 each, plus about 20 minutes of prep time.

How it rates: 70 out of 100.