The candidate: Texas Hand Roll from Hill Country Chicken, 25th and Broadway in Manhattan. The original Hill Country is an excellent barbecue joint around the corner with the best brisket I’ve had in New York City. The fried chicken at this place matches that standard. It’s good stuff. Also, there are a bunch of games in the basement (though I was alone today and the basement was closed).

The construction: Chicken fingers with cole slaw and pepper jelly in a tortilla, served in paper sno-cone holder-thing. The menu said the Texas Hand Roll has almonds and toasted sesame seeds inside, but I neither saw nor tasted either. That’s a mixed blessing as far as I’m concerned: I like almonds and was intrigued by their inclusion here, but I don’t much care for the taste of sesame.

Arguments for sandwich-hood: Meat (and other stuff) wrapped in bread again. I decided the chicken and lamb combo pita from the Halal Guys was a sandwich. Kind of portable.

Arguments against: While it’s listed under “sandwiches” on the menu, it’s not called a sandwich — it’s called a “Texas Hand Roll.” Non-burrito sandwich stuff inside a tortilla is generally known as a “wrap,” the sandwich-hood of which has not yet been determined by this website but which has a name distinct from “sandwich.” Also: pretty messy, what with the cole slaw.

How it tastes: A little bit confusing, to be honest.

Now look: Nothing in here isn’t great. The chicken tenders are piping hot, crispy and perfectly seasoned on the outside and moist on the inside. The jelly, sweet and gooey with just a hint of peppery front-of-the-mouth spice to keep things interesting, goes well with the salty chicken. And it’s hard to imagine many sandwiches or sandwich-type food items upon which the tangy, crispy cole slaw — wet but not watery, creamy but not drenched in mayo — would not taste fantastic.

But whether it was because the almonds were missing or because the tortilla added almost nothing or because my hands wound up sticky or because the ingredients were not evenly distributed — some bites were all chicken, some were all cole slaw — about halfway through eating this thing I started wondering why it needs to exist.

Chicken tenders are already portable! Hell, they’re already meat wrapped in bread (though not sandwiches on their own, obviously). And if I were served chicken tenders with the pepper jelly for dipping and a side of cole slaw, I could have enjoyed nearly the exact same effects I got from the Texas Hand Roll and actually kept my hands cleaner.

I’d have needed a fork for the cole slaw, I guess. But since there were precious few delicious bites combining the chicken, the jelly and the cole slaw, it’s hard to argue that wrapping them all up together in a tortilla had much of a purpose here besides suggesting they be served together.

The verdict: No. I’m going to say not a sandwich. For one thing, it wasn’t completely wrapped up and it needed to be eaten out of a cone for neatness, so it’s not going to settle the inevitably forthcoming wrap debate on its own.

For another — and this may be shakier territory, I’ll admit — I think I’m prepared to argue that for a sandwich to really be a sandwich it needs to be a sandwich for some purpose. It doesn’t have to be a strong purpose, mind you: Maybe the bread is just there to hold together a bunch of ingredients meant to be bitten into at the same time or to keep the hands from getting covered with dressing or because bread is delicious and will go nicely with whatever other ingredients are involved.

But just wrapping something up in bread when it doesn’t necessarily make it neater, tastier or more cohesive doesn’t seem like creating a sandwich in the spirit of sandwiches. I’m still hashing this one out, though.

What it’s worth: It costs $9, which doesn’t seem too bad until you realize that a two-piece dark meat chicken with a side and a biscuit costs the same. And the biscuits (as seen above) are amazing.

Lots of Steak N’ Shake talk in New York since one opened up a couple of blocks from my office. I waited until I got to Florida to give it a try.

The sandwich: Western BBQ Double Steakburger from Steak N’ Shake, many locations. This particular burger came from the Steak N’ Shake on Route 1 in Stuart, Fla.

The construction: Two burger patties, with cheese (American? Cheddar?) between them and on top, bacon, fried onions, regular onions and barbecue sauce on a toasted bun.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: What am I supposed to be comparing this to again?

Because when Steak N’ Shake arrived in New York, people acted like it belonged in the Shake Shack/Five Guys/In-N-Out pantheon of fast-ish food burgers, and that’s just not true. Not even close.

Straight up, no disrespect: The meat’s just not as good. On those burgers, you taste the delicious hamburgery goodness of the ground beef. On this, the meat’s a little chewy and kind of gray, not particularly plentiful or flavorful, and mostly serves the base upon which the toppings can do their bidding.

As for the toppings: The fried onions are great. They don’t taste like onions at all, which is fine by me. They’re basically just little bits of salty fry-stuff sprinkled on top of the burger, and they maintain their crunchiness throughout. Easily the best part of the sandwich.

The barbecue sauce, on the other hand, is a bit sweet for my tastes and without much tang to it. I might have preferred ketchup, and that’s a pretty damning thing to say about barbecue sauce. The bacon is good: It tastes like bacon, which is better than most non-Wendy’s fast-food burger places can say, and its lack of crunchiness is more than made up for by the fried onions.

The cheese is creamy but its flavor gets overpowered by that of the barbecue sauce. The bun is notably good: A touch toasted, but still soft on the inside and clearly fresh.

The Steak N’ Shake burger holds up reasonably well against the best that the national chains have to offer and — in Florida at least — is comparably priced. If I were choosing between this and a Double Baconator from Wendy’s though, it’s hard to say I’d continue picking this after the novelty wore off.

What it’s worth: $4.99 with fries and a soda, which is a good deal. But if you’re going to want to eat in the dining room because you need to photograph this thing and the interior lighting sucks in your rental car, know that Steak N’ Shake has waiter service so you’ll have to drop a few extra bucks for a tip.

How it rates: 65 out of 100.

I’m in pretty woeful shape right now, and since a) Port St. Lucie offers mostly greasy chain food and b) the Brooklyn pickup baseball season approaches, I’ve been trying to eat healthy until I head south for Spring Training. Turns out it kind of sucks. I relapsed a little this afternoon.

The candidate: Chicken and lamb combo on pita from the Halal Guys cart on the corner of 53rd and 6th in Manhattan. There are often several Halal Guys carts on various nearby corners — the ones where the guys have the bright yellow shirts and the Halal Guys logo are all affiliated. Sometimes one will have a really long line while one of the others is practically empty. It’s the same food. Get on a short line.

The construction: A soft, warm pita topped with chunks of chicken and lamb, lettuce, white sauce and hot sauce. They put it together while you stand there so it’s fully customizable. Onions, tomatoes and barbecue sauce are also available, but the pictured configuration is the one I almost always go with.

Arguments for sandwich-hood: It’s meat wrapped in bread. Though it’s messy, it’s at least vaguely portable. The focal point is inarguably the stuff inside the bread, not the bread itself. The cart itself calls it a sandwich, and it is ordered that way to distinguish it from the platter.

Arguments against: There’s only one piece of bread stuff. Lamb meat on a pita is usually called a gyro. Also, it’s very messy, and inevitably a bunch of the inside stuff falls out onto your hands and desk and shirt and keyboard. You’d probably be better off eating it with a fork if you were some type of sucker.

How it tastes: Spicy. That hot sauce is no joke. I specified “a little” hot sauce while ordering — something I only know to do from experience — and still wound up with a lunch to clear the sinuses and scald the esophagus.

I’m on board with that, though, and this is a pretty awesome meal. The meats are both tender and peppery. The lamb in particular is amazingly seasoned, kind of like a peppery lamb meatball. And it all works well in conjunction with the slightly tangy, slightly sweet, creamy white sauce. The lettuce provides the crunch and a pathetic little nod to your recent health kid. The pita, which they heat on the grill before constructing the thing, is warm and strong, chewy and a little toasty.

My one quibble would be that there’s a ton of meat, which is awesome, but they only add the white sauce at the end, after the lettuce. So the effect is that you get a bunch of pure-meat bites with no white sauce on there, and a bunch of delicious white sauce wasted on the lettuce that falls into the foil. You can try to reconstruct it as you go, but it takes some effort.

Considering the price it might be asking too much, but I think to put this thing into the realm of the sublime they could lay down the chicken, then hit it with white sauce, then the lamb, then more white sauce, then the lettuce. No meat left unsauced. And then if you lose some lettuce, BFD.

It’s worth noting, I guess, that this particular cart has a reputation as the city’s best street-meat. It’s really good, but I think part of why it gets talked up so much is that many “foodie”-types aren’t willing to try just any street-meat cart, and if they were they’d find that many of them are also really good. This one’s definitely a touch better, but I think a lot of that has to do with the perpetual freshness of the meat that comes from the constant lines. It’s a positive feedback loop of sorts.

Also, while I enjoy food from Halal Guys all the time, it’s decidedly not the best street meat I’ve had in the city. That honor belongs to the “From Atlantis With Love” cart that used to be outside CBGBs. If anyone knows where that guy sets up these days or if he’s still out there, please let me know. He deserves a review here, if not the Nobel Prize for Awesomeness.

The verdict: With apologies to the B family of Rochester and Maryland, this is a sandwich. It’s borderline I’ll admit, but it is definitely still meat wrapped in bread that you pick up and eat with your hands, and its focal point is certainly the part inside the bread. Lots of sandwiches that are decidedly sandwiches are messy, so that issue alone is not enough for me to reject its sandwich-hood. That it’s a gyro shouldn’t change anything; I’d say that a gyro, like a hamburger, is a type of sandwich.

What it’s worth: The best lunch deal in these parts in a landslide. This thing costs $4.