The New York Times
Dining & Wine
The Next Best Things in Sliced BreadBy JULIA MOSKIN
Published: April 30, 2008
NEW YORK has long been a city of stand-up eaters, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t picky. To make it here, a sandwich has to work overtime, being portable, filling, interesting and tasty.
“What’s better than a really great sandwich?†said Alexandra Raij, the chef at TÃa Pol and El Quinto Pino, who is hosting a sandwich potluck for friends at her apartment next week. “Nothing that I’ve ever made.â€
It should be noted that Ms. Raij is the inventor of several memorable sandwiches, including one filled with sea urchin and drizzled with fragrant mustard oil. But with all respect to her uni panini, it is not a real New York sandwich. Slim and precise, it lacks the compressed, complete pleasures of the Cuban sandwich, the heft and chew of a fully loaded gyro, the cool crunch of a Vietnamese banh mi. Those three are two-fisted, five-minute complete meals with the kind of flavor and texture contrast available on, say, a seven-course tasting menu at Jean Georges.
A great New York sandwich is large; it contains multitudes. And new contenders are turning up all the time to challenge the mighty meatball parm and the elegant B.L.T. Whether invented, imported, or refined here — whether discovered in the boroughs or farther afield — the seven sandwiches here move the dialogue forward.
The research for this article produced as much regret as revelation, with unrequitable longings for far-away creations like Chicago’s jibarito (steak squeezed between thin, crusty slices of smashed plantain) and extinct species like the chacarero of Jackson Heights, Queens: a Chilean sandwich with a garnish of chopped green beans, the specialty of a bakery that is now closed.
Most of all, the research was extremely filling.
The ground rules: A sandwich had to be composed as such; mere food on bread did not count. (This left out, for example, pan de lomo saltado, a popular Peruvian stir-fry of beef, onions and peppers laced with soy sauce, typically served with French fries, but piled onto a crusty roll for sandwich purposes.)
Burgers and wraps were out of the running, as was the universe of empanadas, samosas, patties and arepas; the same went for any sandwich that had to be eaten inside a restaurant or was otherwise unavailable for travel to a picnic, a ballgame or a playground.
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