Ultimate B-egg-el: everything bagel, garden veggie cream cheese, slice of sharp cheddar cheese, pickled beets, sprouts, arugula, it's friday would you like a fried egg, vinagrette.
Warm ciabatta with pesto, heirloom tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, a pinch of salt and black pepper, balsamic glaze, and some greens.
For some variety add grilled portabella patties, Parmesan, or brie.
When I was 14 i flew to california to visit my grandmothers place in sacremento. Down the street there was an ice cream shop/diner called Vic's my grandmother would take me there every few days and I'd get their reuben. I don't know what it was specifically about that reuben but I still think about it.
It was pretty heavy on the swiss cheese and there was a significant amount of beef. The saltiness from the cheese and beef mixed with the sour and slightly sweet of the thousand island and sauerkraut so perfectly and I had a chocolate milkshake and some ruffles too. The sandwich had been pressed and pan fried in butter too so it had a really nice crisp to it
it's a reuben; but that name is licensed so they call it a russian sandwich.
it's near the museum of modern history in manhattan.
the corned beef is chunked out into thin-ish shards instead of sliced like all of the other reubens.
the saurkraut is homemade; thick; crunchy; and tart af and the rye is also homemade and super tangy. i suspect that they make the saurkraut the same way they make mexican style pickled jalapenos/carrots/onions/etc.
they also make their own dressing and it's got a fantastic kick to it entirely due to the fact that the entire staff is mexican; no one speaks english and none of the patrons are wasp americans. (you're not welcome if you can only speak english).
i haven't had that sandwich since 2009 and i still crave and fantasize about it each time i want a delicious sandwich so good that it makes you lick your hands clean after you eat it.
i've stopped eating reubens because they pale so badly in comparison that it makes me angry to be reminded that i paid for such a THOROUGHLY mediocre alternative.
Why can't the U.S. buy decent sauerkraut at the store? Why must we make it ourselves or get awful kraut? Germany has a unique and delightful kraut for seemingly every town and village, but the U.S. has exactly one type from a handful of companies that all make it the same. Well, maybe two types if you count 'canned' but I don't reckon that to be actual sauerkraut. What was the topic? Sandwiches? Well, if I could find a good kraut, I would spend my days trying to recreate a reuben-like masterpiece.
I know I sound like a corporate shill, but check out Cleveland Kitchen brand sauerkraut. It's not as good as homemade, but it's worlds better than that nuclear waste found in the questionable meat aisle of the grocery store or the cans.
I call her Hamela Sandwerson.
I gotta get the good sourdough from the bakery down the street and I have to get there before they slice them all so I can get an unsliced load and slice it myself, extra thick. This bread retains heat without burning like no other, so I throw the thick slices in my extrawide toaster and gather the other fixings.
On each slice, a mix of Kewpie mayonnaise (good for ages 0-99, IYKYK) and mustard. Now, at any given time I have five different styles of mustard ready to use, but for preference, to give Hamela her due, I go with the Kosciuszko beer mustard, which is readily available at the Polish deli a block from the bakery, where I also get:
Black Forest Ham! Sliced as thin as the surly teens at the deli can manage. Now, you may think this is a ham sandwich, but we want to use the most flavorful, fragrant, savory ham exactly because we're only going to use enough to impart delicious hammy flavor, and for that, thin slicing and bunching it when we put it on the sandwich is key. I'm talking maximum surface area, babies.
Atop the ham, cucumber pickles. I prefer dill over bread-n-butter. Then a one-year-aged white cheddar, cut thin with a, I don't know what you call it, but I call it the "cheese peeler".
Finally, the star of the show, fresh greens. The urban farm halfway between my house and the deli & bakery are always bagging up all the edible greens they gather from the edge of their growing areas and it's heavy on the mustard greens, making it a good complement to the ham and aged cheddar. I put enough greens on to double the height of the sandwich, then smash it down with the second slice of bread.
Warm bread on the outside, savory ham and cheese, a little bite from the mustard and pickles, and the crisp greens... it's perfect.
please do everything you can to sink that island into the sea. this is henois.
I have so many because I realised recently that most of my favourite foods are basically if not literally sandwiches in some form. What springs to mind now though is the English Fry-up crammed in to a baguette. I almost said the 'full-English' but admittedly it's not quite the full English.
- A crusty but still quite soft baguette is best, similar to bahn-mi bread but longer and not as chewy
- 2 fried eggs
- 2 Cumberland pork sausage (or Irish sausages if you can get them 'cos they're so good) slided in to longish strips on a bias
- Long rasher bacon strips to match the length of the baguette (can fold them if they are a bit too long)
- 2 hash browns
- Heinz baked beans (just a couple of teaspoons)
- Brown sauce
- Ketchup
- A glare from the grumpy Polish woman that made it for you.
Ok it's just a well known breakfast but shoved in a baguette but somehow it does something magical to it. Especially loved this in the UK when I had a bad hangover and I could just about drag myself to the little Polish run cafe near my place. They were great, albeit grumpy.
I'm gonna go the other way with this one. I got a reuben on a pumpernickel bagel last week and they put thousand island and cream cheese and wet ass saurkraut on it and it was a soggy fucking mess and it ruined my lunch. I may never go back to that bagel place.
Oof I'm sorry. A Reuben bagel can be one of the best, but yeah they put 3 wets on there, bad idea
https://www.neworleans.com/restaurants/traditional-new-orleans-foods/muffulettas/
