One time one of my friends was planning to leave the country for a couple of years, so he threw a party and called it “The Last Party.” The rest of us tweaked him about it a lot, talking about how there would be no more parties after this party and as soon as he left the country all partying would cease.

Point is, I’ll eat many more sandwiches in the future and probably write about a bunch of them here. But this is the last sandwich of Sandwich Week, so I figured it needed a heavy headline like that.

The sandwich: Peanut butter and jelly, from the analog TedQuarters kitchen.

The construction: Pepperidge Farm whole grain bread with Skippy Creamy peanut butter on both sides and Smuckers raspberry preserves.

After construction, the sandwich is cut diagonally, which is very, very important. Really can’t stress that enough. I don’t even know why it makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches exponentially better to cut them diagonally, but it definitely does. I think it has something to do with the angles. A diagonal cut gives you a nice corner to bite into to start the sandwich.

Important background information: Sandwich Week took me around the world, via sandwich. I ate sandwiches inspired by Asian, European, Caribbean, South American and Middle Eastern cuisine, plus some plain old-fashioned New York deli sandwiches. They say this nation is a melting pot, a broth stewed from the contributions of myriad cultures. But I say soup is lame, and we live in a giant, sliced-open hero roll just waiting to be layered with the meats of a thousand nations.

I finished Sandwich Week with a peanut butter and jelly I made at home, an intentionally symbolic choice. I will likely often make meals of PB&J’s in the coming weeks as I work to cut the weight I gained during Sandwich Week. Plus, though I realize it’s probably not what the Fourth Earl of Sandwich enjoyed on that fateful day, I feel like peanut butter and jelly is almost the O.G. sandwich. For a variety of reasons, a fitting finale to a wonderful week.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: It’s peanut butter and jelly, dammit. It’s delicious.

Whole wheat bread is not my favorite, I’ll be honest, but it’s a concession I make to health. I ate a lot of fried food last week, fellas, and I can use a little fiber in the diet. If I were making my ideal peanut butter and jelly, I’d probably use potato bread. Soft, delicious potato bread, oddly yellow even though potatoes aren’t.

Skippy peanut butter is clearly the way to go. I know it’s not the healthiest of peanut butters or the most gourmet. But I’ve had the fancy peanut butters where the oil separates on top and all that nonsense and they’re just not my thing. So inconvenient. You want me to stir my peanut butter before I spread it on my bread (and then lick the knife)? That’s a whole extra step. I’m a busy man.

It’s Skippy, baby. That’s the good stuff. I’m cool with creamy or crunchy or honey-roasted or whatever, I’m just loyal to the brand.

As for the jelly, the Smuckers Red Raspberry Preserves is where it’s at. I’ve never been entirely clear on what distinguishes jam from jelly and jelly from preserves, but I know what I like, and this is it. I think jelly tends to have big lumps of goo in there, and that’s not what I want. I want something I can spread evenly over the peanut butter on the bread to create sandwich uniformity. If there are big blobs of grape jelly in there — delicious though they may be — I’m going to inevitably get some bites that are mostly jelly, and I don’t want that.

Also, it’s of the utmost important that peanut butter be spread on both sides of the bread. If you’re reading this blog I kind of assume you’re smart enough to know that. A) Bread doesn’t get soggy with jelly B) More peanut butter.

What it’s worth: Way more than what it costs, which is so, so little. A jar of peanut butter costs what, like $5, tops? And you get like 20 sandwiches out of that. And the preserves are like $4, and once you buy them you pretty much have that jar until you move. It’s like magic, unless you make jam bars or something. So a peanut butter and jelly sandwich costs like a dollar maybe. And the 30 seconds it takes to make it. That’s amazing. It’s hard to find a better ratio of cost:flavor.

The rating: 80 out of 100. Peanut butter and jelly isn’t going to win any awards, and it’s certainly never going to be adequately appreciated. But it just keeps doing its thing, year and year out, performing at a very high level despite a limited set of tools. Maybe some day peanut butter and jelly will have its day in the sun, where it comes into vogue and everyone realizes how cool peanut butter and jelly is, but until then it will just remain a quasi-novelty act among sandwiches: simple, straightforward, heroic. Adam Dunn?

I wanted to eat more than one sandwich yesterday. I did. But sometimes there’s some sort of festival going on in Prospect Park and a bunch of amazing-looking jerk chicken on barrel smokers everywhere you turn, and, well, you know. So there was no sandwich for lunch. Totally worth it, though. Also, the chicken was from a stand called “The Jerk Center,” and they’re running out of you.

The sandwich: Maine lobster roll, Red Hook Lobster Pound, 284 Van Brunt St. in Brooklyn.

The construction: One of them top-loading hot dog buns that are flat on the bottom, lightly buttered and grilled, loaded with their “Maine lobster salad,” which is just lobster meat with a little mayo, scallions and paprika.

The salad, I should note, isn’t as finely cut or heavily mayoed as lobster salads I’ve had in the past. It was basically just huge hunks of claw meat with a little bit of mayo. That’s good — if you’re eating lobster and paying for lobster, you want to taste the lobster.

Important background information: Where to begin. I know David Foster Wallace wrote an essay called “Consider the Lobster.” I haven’t read it, but I’ve certainly followed the instruction. Not because David Foster Wallace told me so, either.

I spent parts of three summers and a few winter breaks working at a huge wholesale/retail lobster market on Long Island. It was tough work, it wasn’t terribly close to my house, and the pay wasn’t great, but the people were nice, I needed a job and this one came with a t-shirt that said “Lobstertrician” on the back.

It wasn’t the hours, the heat, the often obnoxious customers or the occasional bites that got to me. It was the smell. That stench. It was something people liked upon stepping into the place: Fresh fish, saltwater, and boiling lobster. When it’s shellacked onto your skin and singed into your nostrils it becomes a different thing entirely.

I would shower after work and use four different types of soap, trying to scrub the odor off me. Nothing worked. One time, after really scouring myself, I thought I would be OK to go to the movies with a girl I was seeing. And I remember putting popcorn into my mouth, and recognizing the scent, plain as day, on my hand. Inescapable.

The massacres were something else entirely. If you read these pages with any regularity you know I don’t get too bent out of shape about invoking our food-chain privileges, but something about dumping crates upon crates full of living creatures into boiling water will make even the most ardent carnivore wax existential. I killed so many lobsters. I thought about that a lot.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: As you might imagine, I found it difficult to eat lobster or most seafood for years after my stint as a lobstertrician. And it wasn’t that I ate too much lobster or anything like that. It was just that smell. Any hint of it and I wasn’t hungry anymore.

I guess I’m over that now. Time will do some tremendous things for your appetite. This was a really good sandwich.

If you’re putting lobster on a sandwich, you have to let lobster do the talking. No disrespect to all the other delicious elements of a sandwich, but who wants their lobster salad indistinguishable from chicken salad?

The bread was tasty, buttery and warm, but didn’t overwhelm. Neither did the mayo, paprika or scallions. This baby was about that lobster meat, and it was tender, well-prepared (trust me, I know), rich and delicious. It was lobster meat, after all.

It wasn’t very big, though I suppose that’s sort of expected with lobster rolls. Hit the spot, though. After the jerk chicken I wasn’t exactly starving. Plus the lobster roll came with potato chips, which I’m not here to complain about.

What it’s worth: Red Hook Lobster Pound, despite a couple of huge vats of lobsters up front, didn’t really have the smell. Not sure how they avoided it. So that’s good.

But part of my issue with lobster, beyond the personal-history stuff, is that I’ve never really understood why people pay so much for it. It’s delicious, no doubt, but there are many delicious things that cost a whole lot less. Is it just a conspicuous consumption thing? Is the price of lobster driven up by their rarity? The amount of work that goes into harvesting lobster?

I don’t know. This was a $15 sandwich though, and that’s a lot of money to lay down for something that hardly constitutes a full meal. There was a good amount of fresh lobster meat on there, so I don’t doubt it would be worth $15 to anyone who regularly pays market rate for lobster. Since I rarely do, the price seems a bit silly to me. Also, it’s a big pain to get to Red Hook, even from other parts of Brooklyn.

But again, it was delicious.

The rating: 90 out of 100. To some, the Maine Lobster Roll will seem great and a great value, to others, it will seem a bit overrated and too expensive. But it is inarguably excellent. Oh, and it’s from New England. Tom Glavine.

When I worked in Chelsea I used to pass this place all the time. And every time I thought, “hmm… Japanese fried chicken, huh? I oughta try that place.” I was right.

The sandwich: Chicken Katsu sandwich from Tebaya, 144 w. 19th St. in Manhattan.

The construction: Two deep fried chicken cutlets on a soft bun with cole slaw, miso sauce and homemade wasabi dressing.

Important background information: Cole slaw is a delicious sandwich topper. Great way to add flavor, moisture and crunch in one fell swoop. One of my go-to orders at delis is honey-maple turkey, bacon, muenster and cole slaw. You don’t need dressing when it’s like that.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: That’s a lot of chicken, fellas. A lot of delicious chicken.

Tebaya used dark meat, which I really appreciate. I’ve never understood why dark meat costs less than white meat, it tastes much better. Sure, it’s fattier, but that just means it stays moist better under heat. I suppose it was that choice that made Tebaya use two cutlets instead of one, since boneless thighs are generally smaller than boneless breasts and one alone might not have filled out the sandwich.

The chicken was amazingly crispy. The breading was thick — I assume it was panko — and it really crunched, especially when I first bit into it. They clearly fried it to order, which makes two chicken cutlets in a row for me. Sandwich Week rules.

The miso sauce — coating the chicken — was very good. Tasted like sweeter, gooier soy sauce basically, which I guess is what miso sauce is. The cole slaw was present, but it didn’t really have much flavor and whatever extra crunch it might have added was unnecessary thanks to the crispyness of the chicken. I didn’t taste any wasabi at all.

Still, the chicken in miso sauce on its own was good enough to carry the sandwich to excellence. But I couldn’t finish it, which says something. There was just a lot of food there.

What it’s worth: More than the $6 I paid, for certain. What a bargain! I could have cut this thing in half and made it two small meals. That’s like Taco Bell levels of reasonable. The subways came pretty quick, too, so I actually invested less time in this sandwich than any but the ones I made at home. And it was definitely worth it.

The rating: 88 out of 100. An excellent and exciting sandwich, if not a particularly dynamic one. And maybe a tiny bit too big for its own good, if that’s even possible. Prince Fielder?

Alex Belth tipped me off to the Oxtail Sliders at La Fonda del Sol, right near Grand Central. From clicking around online I knew the place would be a bit swankier than the haunts I usually seek out for sandwiches, but there was something enticing about the fact that the Oxtail Sliders were only available through yesterday, in honor of the running of the bulls in Pamplona). Exclusive, limited edition sandwiches. I like the sound of that.

(Incidentally, the running of the bulls strikes me as one of the dumbest things imaginable. I mean, I get that it’s probably some kind of rush to flee an angry animal, but if that’s how you get your jollies, why do you have to do it with all those other people around, potentially making your path out of the bull’s way more complicated? You can piss off and subsequently run from an aggressive animal in so many places. Why travel to Spain for it?

Also, while I find highlights of the running of the bulls endlessly entertaining, I don’t really see how it would be similarly entertaining to be on the ground, nor do I feel any sympathy for anyone who gets aced by a bull. One of the great things about contemporary living is that, in most places, we do not have to reasonably fear animal attacks. Our ancestors worked really hard to get us to this point. If you get messed up by a bull you’ve angered or a crocodile you’re screwing with or a tiger you’re whipping on stage [looking at you, Roy], don’t expect me to get all broken up. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t mess with animals that can easily destroy you.)

Anyway, La Fonda del Sol was packed — go figure, at 6 p.m. at a place that’s attached to Grand Central Station — and they said it would be 20 minutes before I could sit anywhere. So I bailed and went to check out another midtown eatery recommended by SeriousEats.com, where, it turns out, every week is Sandwich Week.

The sandwich: Spicy sausage lafa from Olympic Pita, 58 W. 38th st. in Manhattan.

The construction: Lafa — a big, soft flatbread similar to naan — with, hmm, lots of stuff. There was some merguez sausage (or something similar), but also lettuce and carrots, french fries, hummus, tahini and hot sauce. Basically the guy put the sausage on the lafa and then kept pointing to things and asking me if I wanted them on the sandwich, and I kept saying yes until he got to the onions. No onions for me.

Important background information: I love sausage, don’t get me wrong, but I think sausage might be a tiny bit overrated. Great sausage is as good as anything in the world, but there’s simply too much variance in sausage ingredients to expect any sort of consistency. You can’t just order anything called sausage and assume it will be good, like you can with bacon.

Generally, I like spicy Italian sausage, Texas-style cheddar-jalapeno sausage and straight-up breakfast sausage the best. Also, I don’t know why breakfast sausage needs to be exclusively for breakfast. Someone made a bad decision when they named that sausage. They should have called it “timeless sausage” or “perpetual sausage.”

What it looks like:

(Sorry, the lighting was bad and this thing did not photograph well.)

How it tastes: Well, meh. The ratio of ingredients was all off, which actually wound up working in my favor because the lafa was the best part and there was an overwhelming amount of it. It was a bit chewy, but it really worked with the hummus, tahini and hot sauce.

I’m very particular about hummus. If it’s ground really fine, almost liquidy, I love it. If it’s grainier or you can still see the lumps of chickpeas, I’m no fan. Olympic Pita makes precisely the type of hummus I enjoy. Really good stuff. In fact, I might even go back there just to get the hummus, and maybe some lafa to dip in the hummus.

I wouldn’t get the spicy sausage sandwich again, though. What little sausage there was didn’t taste all that great — plus it was just really unappetizing to look at, for whatever reason. The french fries added nothing, and something in there left my stomach hurting hours after I finished.

What it’s worth: That’s the other thing — they charged me $11 something for a huge piece of flatbread with a nominal amount of unimpressive sausage, some french fries, lettuce, and various sauces. It came with a salad, but whatever. That’s a lot of money for mostly bread, hummus, tahini and hot sauce.

The rating: 50 out of 100. The excellent lafa and delicious hummus saved this from dropping below replacement-level. It was still worthwhile on the strength of certain attributes, but extremely limited and lacking punch. The Luis Castillo of sandwiches.

No frills, just Sandwich Week:

The sandwich: Chicken parm roll from Torrisi Italian Specialties, 250 Mulberry St. in Manhattan.

The construction: Pretty simple, really: A soft sesame-seed roll with breaded chicken, red sauce, fresh mozzarella and fresh basil.

Important background information: I mentioned my high standards before, but they’re especially high when Italian food comes into play. My mother is Italian and a terrific cook, and, like all good Italian (or half-Italian) men, I’m fiercely loyal to her food. Plus then I worked at an Italian deli that made its own mozzarella and everything, so I’m pretty distinguishing when it comes to that cheese.

And I think if I had read the New York Magazine review of Torrisi Italian Specialties I might have skipped the place entirely. It refers to Italian-American cooking as an “oft-derided cuisine” and suggests that Torrisi is a “high-concept gimmick.”

First of all, who’s deriding Italian food? I thought Italian, and especially the American interpretation of Italian food, was like the main food culture that everyone agreed on. Who doesn’t like pizza?

I mean, maybe I’m biased, but the idea of serving a variety of food ironically is about the most obnoxious thing I’ve ever heard. Especially when that style of food was delicious long before you got your condescending hands on it. Food is to be enjoyed unironically. And I guess it hits home to me if someone’s playfully mocking Italian-American food, since I grew up loving it and then spent years laboring over it at the deli.

Granted, I have no idea if Torrisi Italian Specialties really set out to serve the food I grew up loving in some sort of ironic fashion. The place was almost pretentious in its lack of pretense, but that could mean anything. Plus, you know, who cares? Like I said, I believe food should be enjoyed for the sake of enjoying food, so the motivations of the people serving the food don’t really make a difference to me. I’m here to eat.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Very good, but not exceptionally good. I can’t point to a single element of the sandwich that didn’t taste as good as anyone could ever expect. The sauce was sweet, the cheese was gooey, the chicken was hot and tender, the basil was, well, basily. And all those ingredients are delicious.

But nothing on the sandwich really jumped out at me to make me be like, “whoa! That’s the best (insert that thing here) I’ve ever had.” Plus something in there — either the breading of the chicken or the mozzarella — was pretty salty and certain bites of the sandwich might have bordered on too salty.

On the whole, though — like I said — it was very good. An amazing number of eateries manage to screw up chicken parm sandwiches, which is baffling because they’re pretty simple. Torrisi Italian Specialties is not one of those eateries. They make chicken parm sandwiches as well as anyone. Just not appreciably better.

What it’s worth: The $7 price tag was more than reasonable, but probably part of what’s holding me back from a more glowing review of the sandwich is that I waited about a half hour for them to make it. I’m pretty sure I just went in at precisely the wrong time; the line was never longer than it was when I got on it. Regardless, by the time I got the sandwich, I expected it to be epically awesome.

And though the sandwich was delicious and I’m glad I ate it, it was not so decidedly better than a chicken parm hero at a good pizzeria to make it worth the trip to SoHo and the long wait.

The rating: 83 out of 100. Better than the Cuban I made but not better than the Sloppy Bao. If the Chicken Parm Roll from Torrisi were a baseball player, it would be Paul Konerko. Indisputably good, but no one could ever reasonably argue it’s a Hall of Famer.

I hope last night’s sandwich will be the least exciting of the sandwiches I enjoy during Sandwich Week. Straight up, I had some ingredients left over from Monday night’s Cuban, and I’m not one to throw out good Portuguese rolls and ham.

The sandwich: Ham and cheese, TedQuarters.

The construction: One of those aforementioned Portuguese rolls with deli ham and provolone from our grocery store. Somehow our local supermarket doesn’t stock Boar’s Head products, which is total bulls***. So this was some knock-off brand ham that the supermarket claims is better than Boar’s Head. It’s not. It’s not terrible, and it’s better than Hormel ham or any of the disgusting pre-sliced, packaged varieties the supermarket sells for some stupid reason, but it’s not quite Boar’s Head quality and far from Schaller & Weber or the stuff they sell at Whole Foods.

It’s very important when making sandwiches at home to pile on the slices one at a time, making sure there’s lots of folding and creasing in the process. Never just pull out a stack of five slices of ham from the package and place them right on the bread. That’s terrible. I would hope you know better, but I’ve actually purchased sandwiches from delis that came like this. It’s all about surface area. Surface area is where the flavor comes from.

I did use one Boar’s Head product: Pepperhouse Gourmaise dressing. I’ll get to that in a bit.

Important background information: Ham and cheese feels like the most generic type of sandwich. When I was a kid I really liked bologna and cheese, but now bologna disgusts me (though I like hot dogs, which are basically the same thing, just smaller and grilled). My bologna has a second name, it’s g-r-o-s-s.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Meh. Mostly like a ham and cheese. The bread was a day old and I neglected to warm or toast it, so it was a bit stale. And Portuguese rolls are particularly bready, so there was a lot of stale bread to get through.

The saving grace of the sandwich is the Pepperhouse Gourmaise. This condiment deserves more thorough appreciation. I never had much time for Dijonnaise back in the day and I very much appreciated Mr. Show’s parody commercials for similar products, but Boar’s Head has improved upon the straight mustard-mayo hybrid.

It’s about the pepper, stupid. Delicious peppercorns of various colors dot the dressing and make it inimitably awesome. I’ve had Pepperhouse Gourmaise in my house for about five straight months and I’ve yet to try it on anything and not have that thing become more delicious. I might start putting it in my coffee and spreading it on my toast with breakfast.

What it’s worth: Patrick Flood and I had an entertaining email discussion a couple months back about the concept of “replacement-level” as it pertains to things outside of baseball. The thing that’s important to remember is that replacement level does not mean flat-out terrible. A replacement-level baseball player is just one that could be easily replaced by a player of equal worth.

This was, by my standards, a replacement-level sandwich. It was good because most sandwiches are good, but it would not take much effort or searching to make or buy a similarly tasty sandwich.

I should note that I have exceptionally high standards for sandwiches, so replacement level for me is probably higher than the replacement level for someone who eats Oscar Mayer bologna all the time. Like a replacement-level Major Leaguer versus a replacement-level Double-A player.

The rating: 30 out of 100. I would say that’s a reasonable grade for the replacement-level sandwich on this arbitrary scale. Anything lower than 30 could be replaced by a ham and cheese on day-old bread with some good dressing. Basically the Mike Jacobs of sandwiches.

I am victimized by rainstorms more thoroughly than anyone else I know. I have no idea why. And I don’t mean I’m out in the rain any more often or anything like that, I mean that for no apparent reason I seem to get wetter than most people when rainstorms hit. It’s weird. I am, 100% of the time, the guy that makes people all like, “whoa, hey!” during a storm, looking like I just jumped fully clothed into a swimming pool.

Am I too girthy for umbrellas? So heavy that I draw raindrops with gravitational pull? Lord, I hope not. I mean, I’ve certainly come across plenty of fatter, drier people. Maybe I don’t use umbrellas right or my attempts at common umbrella courtesy leave me uncovered too often. Who knows? All I’m sure of is that no matter how hard I try to stay dry, I get soaked. I could wear a poncho and end up dripping.

But even knowing my proneness to drenching, and knowing that I had three avenues to walk, did I stop, turn around and get right back on the subway when I stepped out at 23rd and 6th today into a torrential downpour? Hell no, bro. It’s Sandwich Week. I decided so yesterday.

The sandwich: Sloppy Bao from Baoguette, 61 Lexington Ave. in Manhattan.

The construction: The Sloppy Bao is the Vietnamese answer to the sloppy joe, but the traditional ground-beef sloppy joe and not the New Jersey variety discussed in the comments section yesterday. It’s french bread piled with curry-seasoned sweet and spicy ground beef, thin strips of green mango and fresh cilantro.

Important background information: The woman at the counter asked if I wanted it spicy. I find that in certain Southeast Asian eateries — especially Thai and Vietnamese places — if you specify that you want your order spicy or, heaven forbid, extra spicy, you probably won’t be tasting anything else for the rest of the week. I’m pretty sure it’s some sort of culture-spanning practical joke intended to punk whiteboys who have eaten a couple of Buffalo wings and think they can handle real heat. Even a strong affirmative nod when you’re asked if you want your food spicy will land you in tears, quivering in the restaurant, chugging milk and begging for forgiveness.

Though I appreciate the challenge, I prefer to keep my taste buds. I always go with “medium spicy,” to let them know that, while I enjoy spicy food, I am not in any way daring them to humiliate me with their awesome powers of spice. As such, I ordered my Sloppy Bao medium spicy.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Oh hell yeah; now we’re talking. The Sloppy Bao is what Sandwich Week is all about.

The bread was warm, crusty and flaky on the outside and soft and tasty on the inside like all good French bread should be. The beef was straight up delicious. Like I said, it was sweet and spicy — but not too spicy, at all, just a nice hint of a kick. And the curry and whatever else is in there (I’d guess garlic, chili and maybe some basil, but I’m hardly a super-taster) made it awesome.

The most interesting part, I guess, was the mango and cilantro working in tandem. I never considered how those things might go together before, but since cilantro has that sharp, almost minty flavor to it and the mango was just a little tart. I don’t like to bandy about terms like “party in my mouth” unless I really mean it, but this sandwich was an explosion of excellence. All sorts of awesome flavors.

What it’s worth: At least $7 and a three-avenue trek through a monsoon. They have monsoons in Vietnam, right? Restaurants there must have to make sandwiches this good to get people to brave the elements to come eat them. I got back to the office 90 minutes ago. My pants are still soaked and my shoes are sopping, but I am satisfied. The Sloppy Bao is a destination sandwich.

The rating: 92 out of 100. I have had better sandwiches, but not many. I will definitely go back to Baoguette.

Yes, Cuban B! Sandwich Week continues.

The Sandwich: A Cuban sandwich, from the kitchen of the analog TedQuarters in Westchester.

I understand there’s some debate as to what constitutes an “authentic” Cuban sandwich, just like some people will tell you there should never be lettuce in a burrito because burritos were originally intended to be brought out to fields by farm workers and lettuce would have wilted or rotted in the heat.

It’s all nonsense. Trace any food item back to its roots and you’ll find it developed out of some sort of cultural exchange. There’s no need to stop the timeline of sandwich evolution at one specific point. Whether or not this is the exact sandwich made in Cuba is immaterial. This is my interpretation of the popular Cuban sandwich.

The construction: We used smaller Portuguese rolls instead of Cuban or French bread because, well, I plan to eat a lot of sandwiches this week and I’d prefer not to die. On one side I put yellow mustard, on the other I put an aioli I made (that’s right, I make aioli) with roasted garlic and hot peppers from our garden.

I sliced leftover pork from the tenderloin I hickory-smoked on Sunday afternoon and put it on the roll with deli ham, provolone and sandwich-stacker pickles. Then I lightly buttered the top and bottom of the roll and pressed the whole thing in a Foreman grill until the cheese melted and the bread was slightly browned.

Important background information: I am not Cuban. My friend Charlie, who inadvertently turned TedQuarters into SandwichQuarters with a text message last week, is Cuban, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him enjoying a Cuban sandwich. He’s obviously a man of distinguishing sandwich taste, though, so I have no doubt he would.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Damn good, if I do say so myself. The smoky flavor of the pork was honestly a bit overwhelming when we ate the pork on its own Sunday night, but in context of the sandwich it was just a nice extra kick. And it was really tender, too — no need to worry about big pieces of pork sliding out of the sandwich when you bit into it. Even consistency is an important factor in sandwich goodness.

The garlic and hot pepper aioli was real, real good, too. I’ve never gardened before in my life, but it turns out there’s something amazingly satisfying about growing your own vegetables, especially when you’re going to smash them and mix them with mayonnaise. Holy crap, look at all these cucumbers and peppers. And they’re all free now thanks to all that work we did a few months ago! Screw you, ShopRite, we don’t need your string beans anymore.

The bread was good too. And the pickles were predictably delicious. The cheese tasted like cheese. Awesome, awesome cheese.

The only problem was that, between the mayo, the ham and the butter on the roll, it was a bit greasy. Sat kinda heavy in the stomach.

What it’s worth: Well like I said, we planted the peppers months ago so that didn’t take much work. Roasting the garlic and putting it all in the Chopster then mixing it with mayonnaise wasn’t hard either. I smoked the pork Sunday and this was just leftover, so that was gravy, so to speak. Plus my wife picked up the ham, pickles and rolls at the grocery store so that didn’t require any work on my part. Basically, the only thing I had to do was construct the sandwich and throw it on the Foreman grill, which took all of five minutes.

So since the cost was minimal and the benefit in deliciousness was high, this was sandwich was a huge net win. Actually I thought it was better than the Chilean number that rated as one of NY Magazine’s Top 101 sandwiches in New York, so I’m patting myself on the back for that. It was good enough I feel the need to come up with some sort of completely arbitrary numerical rating system for the series.

The rating: 78 out of 100. I have very high standards, and a sandwich needs to be worth traveling great distances for to crack 90 and life-changing to hit 100. A 78 is a very good sandwich. And I’m going to go back and give the Chacarero Completo a 56.

It’s Sandwich Week here on TedQuarters. Why? Several reasons:

1) There’s no real baseball for the next three days, and I generally find the All-Star Game pretty boring. (Notable exception: When Pedro Martinez struck out Barry Larkin, Larry Walker, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire and Jeff Bagwell over two innings in 1999.)

2) The last several posts about sandwiches have been popular, and I give the people what they want.

3) I’m already certain I’m eating a sandwich for dinner tonight, so, you know, one post in the bag.

4) Why do I need to give you so many reasons why it’s Sandwich Week? Sandwiches are awesome. Leave me alone.

Anyway, basically the format of Sandwich Week is as follows: I eat a bunch of sandwiches and then write about them here.

I’m partly using the New York Magazine list of Top 101 Sandwiches in New York as a guide, even though I’m certain that list is a bit pretentious. I’m also seeking recommendations — Alex Belth provided tomorrow’s sandwich destination already — so if you know of any notably awesome sandwiches please say so. The only qualification is that it has to be somewhere reasonably accessible to Midtown Manhattan or Central Westchester. I don’t have all day to travel for great sandwiches. That is my dream, though. Someday…

Anywho, here goes nothing:

The Sandwich: Chacarero Completo from Barros Luco, 300 1/2 E. 52nd St. in Manhattan.

The Construction: Thinly sliced steak with string beans, mayo, white cheese, avocado and a banana-pepper/cilantro sauce on fresh-baked Chilean bread. The sandwich comes with tomatoes, too, but I ordered mine without them because they’re not my cup of tea.

Important background information: Barros Luco the eatery is named for the “Barros Luco,” a popular Chilean sandwich that is in turn named for former Chilean president and mustache hero Ramon Barros Luco. The Wikipedia doesn’t make his presidency sound particularly notable, but obviously the man should be celebrated for popularizing steak-and-cheese sandwiches in Chile.

While he doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as the great John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich and inventor of the sandwich, clearly Ramon Barros Luco was a smart dude and venerable statesman.

What it looks like:

I pulled off a half a slice of bread for the purposes of the photo. It was a complete sandwich, obviously.

How it tastes: This was a good sandwich, but not a great one.

The big innovation the Chacarero Completo offers is the use of string beans on a sandwich, which I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered before. But while I like string beans on their own, they were a bit overpowering on the sandwich, which didn’t have a ton of flavor otherwise. In fact, the hot, fresh-baked bread should have been the best part of the sandwich, but even on its own it just tasted like all the string-bean flavor it soaked up.

Still, the sandwich was moist throughout, the smashed avocados were creamy and delicious, and the melted cheese was, well, melted cheese. The steak was a bit tough and entirely lacked seasoning, which wouldn’t have mattered, I don’t think, if I tasted more of the aji verde (banana pepper and cilantro sauce). A closer look at the menu revealed that I could have ordered the sandwich with the slightly spicier aji rojo sauce, and if I find my way to Barros Luco again, I probably will.

There was a bottle ketchup on the table, so I tried dipping the sandwich in some. That helped a lot; it added a little sweetness to what was a pretty salty sandwich. Maybe the tomato would have balanced out the sandwich a bit, but like I said, I’m no fan of that fruit/vegetable/whatever. I like tomato-based products but not the thing itself. Weird texture, I think.

What it’s worth: I haven’t decided exactly how to rate sandwiches in Sandwich Week, and I may come up with something better, but I figure a good way to measure a sandwich’s excellence is to compare it with the cost. For the Chacarero Completo, I walked about a half a mile and spent $8.

The price was more than reasonable —  I am still very full and I ate the sandwich nearly two hours ago. Worth the walk, though? I’m not sure. Like I said, this was a solid sandwich, but I don’t think it was a destination sandwich. If you happen upon Barros Luco, by all means, check it out. But I wouldn’t go too far out of my way for a Chacarero Completo. It was certainly interesting, with the string beans and all, but not outstanding.