Is a falafel wrap a sandwich?

Today I grabbed lunch from I Dream of Falafel, a Chicago-area Mediterraneanish quick-service chain serving, well, falafel–but also schwarma & kebabs, in either a laffa wrap, a salad, a rice bowl, etc. It’s essentially a Mediterranean Chipotle, and in fact if you think about it, a falafel wrap is basically a bean burrito.

I got mine with red pepper hummus, cucumber salad, olives, and sumac onions, with tahini sauce and hot sauce. Surprisingly, after a 2 block walk back to my office, the falafels, which had come out from under a heat lamp before being smooshed into my wrap, were not completely soggy and lifeless, but still had some crunch.

It’s a pretty satisfying lunch, and they have one of those loyalty cards so if I eat enough of them I get to eat another one without paying for it. So that’s a plus. But the main question we’re tackling here is–is a wrap a sandwich?

Yes. A wrap is a sandwich. It’s stuff that’s been assembled into a bread thing, and is then eaten out of hand. Even if our inspiration, the Wikipedia List of Sandwiches, states that a sandwich consists of “two or more slices of bread” etc. etc.

Does this mean I think a bean burrito is also a sandwich? That possibility horrifies even me, but it can’t be discounted. For further discussion, please see Jeb Lund’s excellent piece in the Guardian, Is a hot dog a sandwich? An extended meditation on the nature of America

Tell me how wrong I am below!

Jim Behymer

I like sandwiches.

I like a lot of other things too but sandwiches are pretty great