People always refer to “gilding the lily” as if it’s a bad thing. And look: Lilies are nice and all and I recognize that there’s not much demand to improve them. But only a fool wouldn’t trade a straight-up old school lily for a lily covered in solid gold. Gild that thing. That’s what I say.

The sandwich: Spicy Chicken Sandwich with pepper jack cheese from Chik-Fil-A, many locations, most of them (but not all) outside of New York.

The construction: Boneless, breaded white-meat chicken breast with pickles and pepper jack cheese on a buttered bun.

Important background information: Someone needs to write a book on American regional fast food. Does that already exist? If not, someone needs to pay me to write a book on American regional fast food.

Chick-Fil-A might occupy the first chapter. Though the Georgia-based chain is slowly diffusing throughout the country, in inaccessible areas it remains the stuff of legend, due mostly to the strength of its chicken sandwich. The folks at NY Mag’s Grub Street — likely the “foodie” types who turn up their noses at most chain fast food — even ranked it among the Top 101 sandwiches in New York.

Pressure cooked in peanut oil, it is crispy and tasty on the outside and moist on the inside. It far outclasses chicken sandwiches from all the major fast food chains, many of which are cardboard-dry and appear reconstituted. Better than most is the McDonald’s Southern-style chicken sandwich, a clear rip-off of the Chick-Fil-A sandwich that features exactly the same stuff but is just not quite as good in any way.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Gilding the lily, and not in the good way.

I was hungry by the time my flight landed in West Palm Beach on Friday and downright starving by the time I secured my rental car, so I was thrilled when Matt Cerrone tipped me off that there was a Chick-Fil-A not five miles north of the airport, off I-95. I figured I’d swing through to pick up the classic Chick-Fil-A sandwich, something delicious that I haven’t eaten in some time.

When I got there I saw the sign heralding the new Spicy Chicken sandwich, and I figured if I like the regular one so much and I like spicy things in general, I should probably go for it. And then I saw that I could add cheese to the sandwich for only 30 cents more, and hell, cheese is delicious. Pepper jack that bastard up.

What I ate was still delicious, mind you — undoubtedly head and shoulders over every other fast-food chicken sandwich. The breading was still crispy and the chicken inside still moist. But the spiciness tasted somehow forced, like they just added a ton of spicy spices to the breading and robbed it of its subtlety. (Can a fast-food sandwich have subtlety?) And the pepper jack cheese, though creamy and good, just felt unnecessary.

Eating the sandwich only served to remind me how amazing the original sandwich is in its simplicity. Fried chicken, pickles, bun. Sometimes if everything’s good you don’t need to pile on ingredients for more flavor. That’s how the spicy version tasted, and it made me crave Chick-Fil-A’s OG sandwich offering.

Luckily, I stopped and got one on my way back to the airport. And lo, it was good.

What it’s worth: Cost something like $5 with a Diet Dr. Pepper — which they had on tap at this Chick-Fil-A. And it was only three or four minutes out of my way, tops. Very well worth the price.

How it rates: Hmm. If I had a separate scale for fast-food items, this might reach the upper 80s or even approach the fringes of the Fast Food Sandwich Hall of Fame. But there isn’t a separate scale, so this gets judged against the rest of them, which is kind of unfair but whatever. Truth is, it is the exceptionally rare — and perhaps non-existent — mass-produced fast food sandwich that’s going to compete in deliciousness with the upper echelon of sandwiches I’ve reviewed here.

But you know I like fast food, and obviously I recognize the benefit of enjoying incredibly convenient and reasonably priced fare, especially when it is also very tasty. I didn’t even have to get out of my car! America! 72 out of 100.

Fun fact: Before last Saturday, I had eaten at five of the eight places surveyed on the Travel Channel’s “Sandwich Paradise” show. Nardelli’s, a small Connecticut chain, was the only reasonably local one I hadn’t hit.

So a week ago yesterday, I set out to rectify that. The nearest store is about 45 minutes from TedQuarters in Westchester, but with my wife entrenched in studying for finals and the weather too cold for a baseball game, I figured I’d make the trip.

The sandwich: Italian combo from Nardelli’s, several locations in Connecticut.

The construction: Pruzitini, capicola, salami and provolone on a hero roll with lettuce, Nardelli’s “classic mix” of veggies, olives, mayo and hot sauce.

Things labeled “capicola” in this country vary pretty wildly. Maybe in other countries too, but sadly I’ve only enjoyed things labeled “capicola” in this country. Also, near as I can tell Nardelli’s is the only place on Google selling something called “pruzittini.” I’m going to assume that the cured, chewy meat on the sandwich was the capicola and that Nardelli’s uses legit capicola, not ham cappy. And so then I’ll figure that the ham on the sandwich with the peppery outside — which could probably be mistaken for ham happy — is the pruzitini, since prosciuttini is, near as I understand it, the old-school Italian name for pepper ham, one of my very favorite deli meats.

Important background information: As I may have mentioned, I have very high standards for Italian heroes. At DeBono’s, it was damn-near sacrilege to put mayo on an Italian combo. We would do it, since the customer is always right and everything, but we’d quietly judge the crap out of whoever ordered it. And never, ever would I suggest mayo on any sort of specialty sandwich involving a lot of Italian meats. That’s what oil and balsamic vinegar are for.

Also, being an Italian guy and working in a deli where people frequently come in and order Italian heroes sets you up to make a lot of sort of mock-sleazy jokes like, “I thought I was your Italian hero.” I was the only one who ever made Giuseppe Garibaldi references. No one ever got it.

Oh, and furthermore, heroes are called “grinders” in Connecticut apparently. That’s b.s. They’re heroes. We’ve been through this before.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Good. Good enough to be among eight places featured on a show about the best sandwiches in the country? Probably not. But then, really only one of the places on the show that I’ve been to — Primanti Bros. in Pittsburgh — seems worthy of that honor.

The highlights of the sandwich are the soft, fresh bread and the “Classic Mix.” The bread tastes great — just a little sweetness to go with all the savory flavors inside the sandwich — plus is the perfect consistency to contain all the meats and cheeses. It didn’t, incidentally — there’s a lot of stuff on there, so you’ve got little hope that it won’t turn into a sloppy mess. But the bread made a noble effort to keep everything together, and I can’t really think of any bread that would do a better job.

The Classic Mix, which is actually trademarked, is a bunch of peppers, cucumbers, onions, and who knows what else marinated in something vaguely pickly. Mixed into a big gooey glob with the mayo and hot sauce, it gave the effect of a crunchier, heartier cole slaw with a little heat. It was good, a worthy condiment.

The actual bulk of the sandwich, though, left something to be desired. People on the Internet raving about Nardelli’s write about how much better their meat is than Subway’s or Quizno’s, and that’s undoubtedly true. But I don’t think it would hold up in quality to what you could get at an A&S or a good Italian deli around the five boroughs. It was tasty, no doubt, but greasy — and yeah, I know salami is supposed to be greasy — and left me, long after I had finished, just a tiny bit queasy. Still, it was certainly more enjoyable than not to eat — a nice melange of peppery meat flavors.

And one more quibble — and this could easily be a small-sample size hiccup — one half of my sandwich had nearly all the meat. You can’t see it from the picture, but the meat on the side facing the camera tapered off quickly, and by the outer edge of the sandwich it was nearly entirely bread and veggie goop. It still tasted good, of course, but the sandwich’s maker did not evenly distribute the elements of the sandwich, a personal pet peeve.

In all, the Italian Combo from Nardelli’s sort of reminded me of the very best of the six-foot Italian combo heroes we’d get for football dinners and such in high school. I’m not even sure I can explain why. It was good, but inevitably messy and uneven.

What it’s worth: I got the half-grinder because I also wanted to try their chicken parm (which proved unspectacular) and figured I could handle a full grinder, so I’d get two halves and call it a day. Turns out two half-grinders were too much food for me; there’s a lot of meat here. And price was right: The half-grinder would be more than an adequate lunch, and cost less than $5.

The rating: 82 out of 100.

Something to read while you stew over the Jets game.

The sandwich: Beef sausage hero, Ma Peche, 56th bet. 5th and 6th in Manhattan.

The construction: Beef sausage on baguette with jalapeno mustard-relish and fried shallots.

Important background information: My second trip to a Momofuku restaurant in two weeks after never having been to one before — that alone should speak to the quality of the pork buns.

Actually obtaining a sandwich to go from the Midtown installment requires some foresight: You have to order online the day before or on the morning you want your sandwich. After the pork bun experience I knew I had to have one of these, but it took me a while because I never remember lunch until around noon, and by noon it’s too late to order.

It felt cool to order it, like I knew some sort of secret code. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like it might be needlessly complicated. Do you have to special order the sausage or something?

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Before I even bit into the beef sausage sandwich I knew it was going to be a letdown after the pork buns. Granted, there are some Hall of Fame sandwiches that would be letdowns after the pork buns, but looking at it — just a sausage sitting atop a mustardy ingredient goo on a piece of French bread — I didn’t feel the same pull I did from the glimmering, fatty pork.

The sausage itself was very good. No flavor stands out besides the obvious sausage flavor, but it’s not overwhelmingly greasy or processed-tasting at all. A good solid, sausagey sausage. And though it was beef, in terms of taste I’d say it seemed more toward the Italian side of the sausage spectrum than the German side. It had a nice snappy casing and was well-prepared.

(I know a guy who worked for a while as a fromagiere — a professional cheese taster in a restaurant. Dude was incredible; I never realized anyone could know so much about cheese. He could taste cheese and, in many cases, identify the county from which it came. I wonder if there’s an equivalent job for sausage. There are so many variations of sausage, it’d be good to have an expert catalog them all in some fashion. I guess, though, there are a lot of bad sausages out there, so it wouldn’t all be glorious.)

The bread itself was fresh and flaky, but it might have been slightly too hearty for a sausage sandwich. This is a matter of taste, of course, but the bread was so thick that you either had to take a huge bite to get bread and sausage together or take smaller bites that were mostly sausage staggered with mostly bread. I’m here for the full package, please.

Same thing is true for the ingredient goo. It was itself delicious — easily the highlight of the sandwich — but it got buried so deep down in the crevice of the bread that it was near-impossible to get a bite of sausage with adequate jalapeno mustard-relish on it.

They say it’s cucumbers, jalapenos and mustard on the menu, for what it’s worth, but obviously I know what mustard and relish taste like combined. And this tastes a lot like that. Those cucumbers must be pickled. Indisputably good, though — I don’t really care what they call it if it’s good. The mustard had a nice bite to it and the relish part added sweetness.

The jalapenos brought a little flavor, but not too much heat. I rectified that with the hot sauce they included on the side. Word is there were crispy fried shallots in there, and if I strain hard I can remember at least a little bit of crunch, but I think most of them were drowned in goo and rendered uncrispy.

In all, it was a collection of really delicious elements and, truth be told, a very good sandwich — some sort of more uppity take on the hot dog, really. It just felt like it had the potential to be much more if they were better distributed or in better proportion. As it was, it was a nice sampling of good flavors but not a single, cohesive, transcendent sandwich.

What it’s worth: Cost $10 and a five-block walk. Probably worth it, though next time I’ve got lunch planned out far enough in advance to order it from Ma Peche, I’ll probably try the banh mi or the noodles.

How it rates: 75 out of 100.

I had heard of the Momofuku restaurants many times before I finally ate at one last week. I really don’t know why. I suspect that they were, for a time, quite trendy, because now when I hear snobby New Yorkers mention them it’s usually with a dismissive snicker, as if they’re somehow not cool now because they were too cool for too long or something.

Whatever. Because I don’t pay much attention one way or the other, I’m not sure that’s the case. My only standard for coolness in eateries is delicious food.

The following sandwich is that, so I will hereby deem the Momofuku Milk Bar incredibly cool. Just a very hip place to hang out if you’re someone that appreciates pork. And a big hat tip to fellow pork enthusiast Alex Belth for dragging me there, and for filling me in with all sorts of inside knowledge about the pork.

The sandwich: Pork buns from Momofuku Milk Bar, 2nd Ave. and 13th St. in Manhattan. I’m told the pork buns are also available in at least one of the other Momofuku restaurants, which are mostly in the same neighborhood.

The construction: Pork belly on a steamed bun with scallions, pickles and hoisin sauce. I added sriracha.

Important background information: These are nothing like the pork buns I had in China, though both are good. Those looked more like dinner rolls, only they had delicious pork stuffed inside. I was sort of expecting that when I heard the term “pork bun” bandied about so often, but, like I said, it worked out OK.

Apropos of almost nothing, in the course of a month in China I learned how to say all of six things in Mandarin Chinese. One of them was roujiamo, or meat sandwich — knowledge that obviously came in handy with street vendors, but took part in a silly exchange with a young Chinese woman in a bar. She smiled at me so I figured I’d try my hand at flirting, and it went something like this (only, you know, in Chinese):

Me: “Hello. I am Ted.”

Her: (Something in Chinese I can’t understand.)

Me: “I am a student.”

Her: (Smiles, more Chinese.)

Me: “Internet cafe.”

Her: (Clear international look of confusion.)

Me: “Meat sandwich.”

Her: (Blank stare.)

Me: “Thank you.”

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Oh, lordy.

You stand up to eat at the Milk Bar, and I had to brace myself on the table after taking a bite out of the first one. Holy hell, that’s good.

And for the second straight week, the amazing sandwich was highlighted by amazing pork. This time it the pork didn’t even need to be breaded and fried — just roasted, and without a lot of seasonings either. I’ve never tasted pork like this before — it was so fatty and tender that in terms of texture it almost seemed like duck. But then it was bursting with amazing pork flavor.

Belth tells me that the pork comes from special, extra-fatty super-pigs bred from other famous amazing pork pigs. Apparently the swine are so coddled that they can distinguish between organic and non-organic feed and refuse to eat the latter. I love that: stubborn, uppity pigs. And I get the last laugh!

The rest of the sandwich is good too: The bun is spongy, sweet and moist, but strong enough to hold the ingredients and preserve sandwich integrity. The pickles aren’t overwhelmingly pickly — more like slightly tangy cucumbers, really. But that’s fine. They add a note of flavor and don’t take away from the pork, which is clearly the prize here.

The hoisin added some sweet flavor and a little additional moisture, though, honestly, I think I could have eaten the pieces of pork on their own and they would have been plenty moist. The scallions were only barely noticeable, but they brought a little more pungency and depth to the whole thing. I went light on the sriracha — especially on my second bun — because I didn’t want it to overwhelm the pork, so it served mostly to make the tastes linger in my mouth a little longer, which was welcome.

But again, it’s all about the pork. I need to meet some of these pigs. I want to go pet them and coddle them myself and show them how much I appreciate what they’ve done for me. Outstanding.

What it’s worth: If you can convince Belth to buy — and he’s a pretty obliging dude — they’ll run you only the cost of subway fare. Otherwise, they’re $9 for an order of two, but you’ll probably want at least three for a meal. Not the world’s cheapest sandwich, but you can tell you’re paying for quality.

How it rates: 95 out of 100. Inner circle Hall of Fame sandwich.

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.

At some point in college, I memorized the names, locations and restaurant choices present at every roadside rest stop between New York and Washington. I thought it was funny to refer to them by name — the Walt Whitman, the Joyce Kilmer — and, more importantly, I learned to plan my drive and fueling schedule around the best available fast-food choices.

Over time, though, I lost track of the names and many of the particulars. I developed instead some sort of conditioned subconscious feel for the location of every Roy Rogers along the route, and which Roy Rogers I’d be stopping at based on the amount of gas in the tank at the outset of each trip.

Usually it was the Delaware Travel Plaza, a little past halfway when leaving rested from New York and a great place to recaffeinate when driving back weary after a weekend in DC. It boasted clean-enough bathrooms, a Sbarro for aroma, a Starbucks for coffee, and I think maybe even a Cinnabon for quick and glorious death by sugar — but don’t quote me on that. What mattered most was the Roy Rogers, and a fine one at that.

Look: I don’t mean to knock the other fast-food choices present along the route. (Except Burger King; I’ll happily knock Burger King.) Several stops have Popeye’s Chicken, and Popeye’s Chicken is amazing. But you can get Popeye’s practically anywhere. Except Westchester, of course, unless you’re willing to pay the $1.25 toll to get on the Thruway north from Yonkers to stop at the Popeye’s in the rest stop in Ardsley, which, incidentally, I usually am.

To me, a drive down to DC means a rare opportunity to eat Roy Rogers — the staple fast-food of my early childhood — and I almost never pass it up.

The sandwich: Gold Rush Chicken Sandwich, Roy Rogers, many locations, but not nearly as many as there used to be. For some stupid reason.

The construction: Fried chicken fillet on hamburger bun with bacon, Monterrey Jack cheese and honey mustard. I added lettuce and pickles from the Fixins Bar.

Important background information: I knew the Delaware Travel Plaza closed for renovations last year sometime, but I figured it would be operating again by now and just kind of assumed it would still have a Roy Rogers. Like I said, it’s not something I really thought about, but sort of an ingrained understanding of accessible Roy Rogers restaurants — Roydar?.

Words cannot express my disappointment when I spotted the sign for the new and “improved” Delaware Travel Plaza boasting a Burger King and a Popeye’s. Again, no disrespect to Popeye’s. But c’mon. Just, c’mon.

Worst part was there was roadwork throughout the state, so I had to sit in traffic like a goon, staring at the new, gleaming, vaguely postmodern Travel Plaza. If you’re playing at home, Delaware now has like a billion tolls, endless roadwork, and zero Roy Rogers. For shame, Delaware. For shame.

Luckily, I had enough in the tank to make it past the Chesapeake House and all the way to the Maryland House, by which point I was starving.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Disappointing. Really disappointing.

I got to the Maryland House pretty late — past my dinner time, and apparently late enough that the sandwiches had been sitting wrapped in foil under the heat lamp for quite a while. And I understand how it goes at rest stops. Don’t get me wrong, I’m hardly asking for my order to be made fresh. But I’d rather not unwrap a soggy mess, honey mustard spilled out onto the foil and creating a thin, gooey coating on the outside of the bun.

The chicken itself was rubbery, the cheese underwhelming, the bacon thin and limp. And not enough honey mustard was still on the sandwich proper; it was just kind of all about the sandwich, and all over my hands. The pickles were pretty delicious.

I should say that this sandwich was still OK. There’s only so badly you could screw up fried chicken, bacon and cheese. Roy Rogers tested those limits, and I still devoured the thing. It just didn’t match the quality I’ve come to expect even from roadside-rest Roy Rogers. And I like to imagine Roy Rogers himself wouldn’t stand for this.

What it’s worth: Food tends to be a little more expensive at rest stops because they’ve pretty much got a monopoly on your options. Sort of like Disney World, except if Disney World were among the most depressing places in the world. I think the Gold Rush cost me $6 or something. Pricey, considering.

How it rates: 45 out of 100. A once-very good sandwich clearly past its prime, still boasting some qualities that vaguely resemble a good sandwich, but nonetheless hovering barely above replacement-level. The Miguel Tejada of sandwiches.

This is last week’s sandwich of the week, which I meant to publish Saturday. I failed on that, but here’s a sandwich:

The sandwich: Honey-Maple Turkey, bacon, muenster and cole slaw on a “wedge,” from Pop’s Deli in Hawthorne, N.Y.

The construction: All of those things I just mentioned, piled onto a hero roll, which for some reason they call a “wedge” in Westchester (and some parts of Jersey).

I should note now that I think there’s a difference in the bread styles used for long sandwiches between the delis I grew up with on Long Island and those I now enjoy in Westchester. This could be a small sample size thing, but I’m pretty sure the standard “hero” on Long Island comes on bread that’s a bit flakier and more airy than the Westchester “wedge” bread, which is dense and chewy.

I’m obviously partial to the one I’m more familiar with (more on this to follow), but both are good. And I’m open to the possibility that, in each area, I’m only eating bread from one specific wholesale bakery that supplies bread to all the local delis (for Long Island, I know this to be true).

Is this the difference between Italian and French bread? Hmm… come to think of it, is there a difference between Italian bread and French bread?

Important background information: I think all discussions of effective branding should start with Boar’s Head. Bad lunchmeat can be downright disgusting, but I know when I order Boar’s Head products I can expect a certain quality. And yeah, I recognize that Boar’s Head probably isn’t the best lunchmeat available. But it’s consistently good, and I’d rather not take my chances with an unknown quantity, given the risk.

For that reason, I often order specific Boar’s Head products like Honey-Maple Turkey at delis, since it assures that they’re not going to try to slice up some off-brand turkey that will turn out gross.

This particular sandwich was the product of endless sandwich tinkering from  my years behind the deli counter, and it’s good enough that I think it should be given a name and standardized like the Reuben once was. Preferably, it should be named after me.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Very good, of course. I came to this sandwich, I think, after determining that the sweetness of the Honey-Maple Turkey goes well with bacon (like just about everything else). Pop’s does a good job with bacon — always well-done and crispy — and the turkey was sliced nice and thin, maximizing surface area and thus flavor.

If you appreciate cole slaw even a little bit — I know it’s a divisive salad — I strongly recommend you try it on a sandwich. It adds the moisture you might hope for from mayonnaise or mustard, but it’s obviously way tastier than mayo plus adds an additional crunchy element on top of the bacon.

Muenster cheese you know about, presumably. I don’t remember why I initially put muenster on this sandwich, but it plays. There are a lot of flavors here, and I think a stronger cheese like a cheddar might conflict with the cole slaw, or something. The muenster here is just about complementing the rest of the sandwich, and also making sure the sandwich has cheese on it.

Like I said, both forms of the long-sandwich bread are very good, but I find the Westchester variety fills me up a lot faster than the Long Island type. I think it’s a density thing, but I’m also willing to consider that this sandwich was probably 14″ long and filled with bacon. Could be a simple size thing, too. In either case, this sandwich beat me. Too long, couldn’t finish, to paraphrase the Internet.

The other issue is I’ve now had this sandwich so many times that I’m probably almost biased against it. It’s a bit routine now, even though it’s still really good.

What it’s worth: Cost me about $7.50, I believe, which is a pretty great deal. This really should have been two meals, and I should have known better than to start the second half of the sandwich. I didn’t know better, but that’s on me.

How it rates: 80 out of 100. I can’t find many baseball players from Westchester and this sandwich is a lot better than Dan Pasqua, so I’m just going to go ahead and go with a Long Island guy that’s probably better than an 80: The Frank Viola of Sandwiches. I have no idea why.