This sandwich, from a pizza place, comes on recommendation from former intern Jimmy, a former pizza-place employee who knows a thing or two about pizza places. Incidentally, if you’re a college student eligible for college credit, you too could have the opportunity to work here for no money and recommend sandwiches to me — especially if you have a background in web design or programming. I don’t hire our interns, but if you email me your resume I’ll put it in the right hands.
The sandwich: The “Tuesday” sandwich from Previti Pizza, 41st St. between Park and Lexington in Manhattan.
(Note: This sandwich is only available on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I don’t know what happens if you go in and ask for it on a Wednesday, but you could always try and then fall back on the delicious-looking pizza if you can’t get it. Plus if they have a Tuesday sandwich then it stands to reason they probably have a Wednesday sandwich, and maybe that’s really good too.)
The construction: Roast beef with jus, fresh mozzarella cheese, garlic butter and sour cream and onion potato chips on house-baked bread.
Yeah, you read that right. Sour cream and onion chips. On the sandwich.
Important background information: I am Italian and I love garlic. One time I smoked a bunch of garlic cloves in my home smoker, and though I intended to use them in more involved concoctions, I wound up just eating most of them as snacks. When a recipe calls for garlic, I generally double the amount. My wife and I have spent time discussing whether anything could really be too garlicky, since I’ve never reached that mark with anything I’ve made at home.
What it looks like:
How it tastes: Really good, and really garlicky. Maybe on the cusp of critical garlic, that ever-elusive “too garlicky” distinction. Not quite there, because it was still quite tasty. Just don’t plan on spending your afternoon making out with anyone who hasn’t also eaten this sandwich.
The bread is the highlight here. I’m not sure if it’s just a ball of pizza dough baked to crispiness and sliced in half or not — it tastes like it could be — but it’s got a great, crispy crust and a nice doughy inside that soaks up all the roast beef and cheese juices. It’s clearly fresh, and it comes piping hot. The one thing, though, is there’s some sort of powdered seasoning on the outside part of the bread that gets all over your fingers and also might be responsible for taking this thing up to that garlic threshold. Salty, too.
Inside the sandwich, the roast beef, cheese, potato chips and garlic butter all kind of ooze together into a delicious meatcake. Because it’s all hot, the roast beef is more toward the well-done side and doesn’t have that rare redness on the inside that a lot of roast beef enthusiasts are partial too, but then if you’re looking for a sandwich that emphasizes the roast beef your probably in the wrong place. The essence of this sandwich is the combination of textures — crispy bread, meaty beef, gooey cheese, crunchy chips — and though you can taste all the elements, the most powerful flavor, by far, is the garlic.
The sour cream and onion chips, I should mention, are an inspired addition. They don’t hold perfectly hold their crunchiness because of all the juices inside the sandwich, but then there’s a heck of a lot of crunch from the crust of the bread anyway. And the seasoning gives it a nice, familiar, potato-chippy aftertaste. Really clutch for those of us who like to accompany sandwiches with potato chips, because now you don’t even have to bother opening the bag and eating them one by one, they’re already on there so chow down brother.
(Incidentally — and I know this sounds gross — crumbled up Nacho Cheese Doritos go pretty well on a hot dog. Try it before you judge it.)
What it’s worth: It came with a can of soda, and I believe it ran me $8. And since it’s right near Grand Central and I ate it for lunch on a day I was coming in late, it wasn’t really out of my way at all. Certainly well worth the cost — especially when you consider the price of lunch in Midtown.
How it rates: Russ from programming is going to get on me about this, but I’ve got to put it in the 80s. It clearly needed something more to make the Hall of Fame — perhaps some sweet element like a marinara? — and maybe a bit less saltiness and garlic flavor. But it was still really good, as all sandwiches in the 80s are.
That’s the thing — I normally eat way more sandwiches than I review here, so only the notable ones get written up. I bring a sandwich for lunch most days that’s probably in the 50s. I had a sandwich from the deli around the corner last night that was probably high 60s. I imagine sandwiches could be charted on a bell curve of excellence, so there are more sandwiches in the 70s than the 80s and more sandwiches in the 80s than the 90s. So shut up, Russ. Also, that meeting you run is excruciatingly boring. You should consider PowerPoint or a musical interlude or bringing in the Knicks City Dancers or something. 83 out of 100.
This will be my first in a professional capacity. I went to Port St. Lucie for a long weekend in March with my dad and grandfather when I was 10, and then, in college, took a whirlwind tour of the Grapefruit League on the nerdiest Spring Break ever with a couple of my roommates.
Tedquarters 