The SI Vault has a photo gallery of athletes and sandwiches. I’m not sure David Stern counts as an athlete and a few of these are definitely not sandwiches, but it’s certainly worth clicking through.
Athletes and sandwiches
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Category Archives: Random tidbits
The Sandwich Show (again)
I thought I over-promoted this, but a couple regular readers mentioned that they missed it, so I figured I’d post it again. Also because I’ve got all sorts of meetings today:
The Sandwich Show: Chicken-fried steak sandwich
In which I make a sandwich. This is the first try at this (both the sandwich and the show):
I think future episodes will aim to be less instructive and more humorous. The good news is the sandwich was legit delicious. Big thanks to the great Brett Hauze for making this. Brett also got a sandwich.
This happened
We removed the last bit of wrapping and there it was: the top half of a Whopper sitting comically upon an epic throne of bacon, with a sliver of lettuce sprouting from the base, suggesting that the bottom half of the burger may be salvaged yet….
Before going to work on the burger, Mr. Sato once again began his primal ritual of psyching himself up, shouting: “This is what real hamburger lovers eat! 10 strips? 100 strips? Like that’s enough! A real man needs 1050 strips of bacon!”
Mr. Sato then plunges his face into the top of the burger, holding on to the top bun and a layer of bacon below the beef patty for support. Eventually he runs out of burger to supplement his bacon and simply begins stuffing bacon into his mouth by the fistful, all the while ranting: “Delicious! This is what meat is all about! This is the taste of a real hamburger!”
We’re calling this performance art, right? I know I am. Let’s go to the videotape. Warning: Will only kind of make you want bacon. Also, the Weather Report-y music in the closing credits is perfect:
Yeah, there’s no way that’s not art. Via Boing Boing.
A glimmer of hope
From Ryan via Ezra Klein comes and IBIS World report of the 10 fastest-growing industries in the United States. Some make sense, some are kind of silly, others are kind of depressing, one of them both speaks well and bodes well for all of us:
McIlhenny, you may know, is the Major Industry Player responsible for Tabasco products. Reckitt Benckiser, it turns out, is responsible for a bunch of household cleaning products, French’s mustard and — relevant here — Frank’s Red Hot.
The report suggests the hot sauce industry “has heated up” due to:
demographic consumption trends, immigration and international demand from Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan. As Americans’ palates have become more diverse, hot sauce has earned tenure on the dinner table. Demand from supermarkets and grocery stores has reflected the change in consumer taste, and food retailers are dedicating more shelf space to ethnic cuisine…. Hot sauce production isn’t expected to burn out any time soon.
Good case for serial commas in that excerpt. The way it is, it sounds like the increase in hot sauce consumption is in part due to a bunch of Canadian, British and Japanese people moving here and enjoying tons of hot sauce. And hey, maybe that happens. Who could blame them really?
I, for one, would welcome an economy based on hot sauce and self-tanner. Everything and everybody would have a delightful orange hue. And our stomachs will be strong inside and out, from all the spicy food and pilates. Maybe the future doesn’t suck so hard after all.
For what it’s worth, I’m currently keeping four hot sauces at TedQuarters: Frank’s, sriracha, Cholula, and the one I made myself. Also, I found it way easier to mention my love of Cholula on this site before they became an SNY sponsor, but it really is good.
Sandwich? of the Week
The candidate: Mami Arepa from Arepas Cafe, 33-07 36th Ave. in Astoria.
The construction: Venezuelan roast pork, shredded white cheese and avocado in an arepa.
Arguments for sandwich-hood: Meat and cheese in bread-type stuff. The bread-type stuff is on both sides of the meat and cheese, and it’s clearly made to be eaten with the hands. Though it’s called an arepa, the focus is obviously on the stuff inside over the stuff outside.
Arguments against: It’s called an arepa, not a sandwich. Ho hum. There’s only one bread-thing (the arepa), it is made from cornmeal, and it’s sort of a pancake/muffin hybrid, and not very bready.
How it tastes: Unsauced, it was good. The wedge of the arepa made proper ingredient distribution difficult, so the first few bites were mostly cheese and avocado and the last few were almost entirely pork. None of those ingredients stood out, but they were all tasty: The pork lightly seasoned and pleasantly chewy, the cheese salty and creamy, the avocado smooth and, well, also creamy.
Before the waiter brought the arepas, though, he put two sauces on the table: A green sauce and an orange sauce. The green sauce tasted garlicky and a little like my prized pio pio stuff, though a touch heavier on the mayo and lighter on the spice. The orange sauce had a jelly-like consistency, with some sweetness and a ton of heat.
In conjunction and carefully applied to the arepa, they made the thing delicious — not just because the sauces tasted good, but because they amplified the stuff inside. I never really understand how this works, but somehow with a little bit of spice, pork tastes porkier, cheese cheesier, everything. There’s probably a life lesson in there but it’s Friday at 5 p.m.
For a few bites, when the sauce is working and all I’m taking down all three ingredients, this is borderline hall-of-fame level stuff. The arepa itself is a perfect vehicle for the melange of flavors inside, too: It’s griddled to crispiness on the outside and holds up under saucy duress giving it almost a panini-like effect, but then it’s got a thin, mealy, soft inside like a johnnycake.
But due to the aforementioned uneven distribution that seems intrinsic to this medium, those bites were fleeting. The rest was still really good though.
What it’s worth: If I recall correctly, around seven bucks. And it’s definitely a meal, though not a huge one.
The verdict: A sandwich. If a gyro’s a sandwich this one’s a no-doubter.
Is it a sandwich?
This is the Mami Arepa from Arepas Cafe in Astoria. It’s a griddled cornmeal pancake split in half and filled with roast pork, avocado and shredded white cheese:
But is it a sandwich?
[poll id=”103″]
Shots fired, covered in cheese sauce
Over at the Classical, friend of the site and usually reasonable dude David Roth demonstrates the type of rigid thinking that hinders science and keeps potential Major League contributors languishing in Triple-A, trashing Citi Field’s new “pastrachos” mostly because they’re “basically a Reuben sandwich that has been dropped from a great height onto a pile of chips.”
The only problem I can find with that is we don’t get to see the impact, preferably in HD super-slow-mo.
The sole complaints I’ve heard from pastracho consumers thus far are that the line at the pastrami place takes forever and the ingredients can be unevenly distributed. The first seems typical of ballpark concessions, the latter typical of nacho-style products.
I offered to buy David pastrachos next time he’s at Citi, and he’s willing to give them a try. So look out for his humbled apology at the Classical, which you should be reading anyway.
File under: Things that sound gross even to me
Gothamist reports that someone’s opening up a mayonnaise store in my old neighborhood. TedQuarters aims to support small businesses and all, but the thought of so much mayonnaise in one spot turns my stomach a little. I’m just imagining gobs of mayo on shelves, and people behind a counter ladling mayo from giant tubs into jars, and a mayo slick on the floor that gets on the bottom of your shoe so you slide around all day. And I realize it’s probably not like that.
Since I have no particular distaste for mayonnaise as a condiment and since this place is making its own high-end, flavored mayos, I’m certainly open to trying it out. I think I’d just prefer it by mail-order or if someone gave some to me.
Tedquarters 