October List sandwiches & September wrapup
Hey guys, I think we had a pretty good first month of the List. We had a total of seven posts about our three sandwiches, and they were all really good. I’d like to do some kind of a wrapup discussion, possibly in the comments on this post? As a Tribunal, I feel like we should be judgy at some point. Personally, I judge the Bacon Egg & Cheese sandwich to be my favorite of the list sandwiches this month, but I’m not 100% certain what we’re trying to decide. I am certainly on board with every one of these qualifying as a sandwich.
October has come, and here are our new List sandwiches.
These look like 3 winners and I anticipate enjoying not only the sandwiches, but what we come up with to write about them.
Please comment here if you plan on tackling one or more of these sandwiches during October. I will try to think of something to say about all three. Also comment below if you have something to say about the September sandwiches, or about the format in which we’re handling the List. It’s early days yet, and I don’t expect everything to be perfect just yet. Let’s figure out a way for this to keep being fun for all of us.
The idea behind this site is to explore the nature of sandwichness by eating every sandwich on the Official en.wikipedia.org List of Sandwiches and then to post here about it, preferably with lots of pictures and also words. Sandwich words.
OK, I’ve been having trouble coming up with posts due to sheer lack of time, but I will go ahead and commit to writing about barbecue from this list, and probably banh mi too, though I’ve never had banh mi and am fuzzy on where in Richmond you can even get a banh mi sandwich (I’m thinking Mekong–http://mekongisforbeerlovers.com/–is a good place to start. Won’t be having any beer, though–sorry dudes).
As for September, I feel like we accomplished what we were trying to accomplish, which was to really examine the idea behind each sandwich and whether it was fundamentally a good or bad one. I like that we mostly cooked the sandwiches we covered for the month, as I think that adds a lot to the idea of investigating the sandwich. Having said that, I will almost certainly be purchasing the barbecue and banh mi sandwiches pre-made in October, so maybe I shouldn’t talk. But yeah, I do think it helps to have at least one writeup of each sandwich on the list that deals with the preparation as well as the consumption of the sandwich, so maybe if the more culinary-qualified among us could hook something up? What do you guys think?
First off, no need to be sorry about not drinking beer. If you ever break edge, I hope to be there 😉 And don’t stress about the writing. Take part to the extent that you enjoy doing it. I don’t want this to be a chore, I want it to be fun.
Second, that’s an excellent point about what we’re doing by drilling into each sandwich, and how it helps that we do a mix of homemade & bought. I will definitely be making my own BBQ and the barros jarpa. I’m not sure about the banh mi yet–I’ve made them at home before, but they’re also super easy to find in Chicago. Maybe I’ll go to Nhu Lan, eat a banh mi there to calibrate, then buy some of their demibaguettes to take home and make my own banh mi.
Thanks, that’s definitely helpful in thinking about the site and what the hell we’re doing, besides having a great excuse to eat tasty sandwiches.
Here’s another question: as we’ve been building the site over the past month+, I’ve been slightly tweaking the look here and there, adding elements, rearranging things, etc. Today I moved the tag cloud to the footer, added a calendar there, added an image bar for the List in the footer, added a “popular posts” widget at the bottom of the sidebar, and created a gradient background image for the header since all that plain white space bugged me. It’s kind of a busy design but I think it all looks good. It makes me hungry anyway. Please let me know if any of this stuff bugs you, or if you have any ideas about the site’s design.
BTW the header background image is of the pastrami sandwich at Manny’s here in Chicago. I took that photo in January and posted it on Twitter to taunt Josh and Thom. https://twitter.com/JimTheBeerGuy/statuses/423175148288491521
I’m shooting for all three of these sandwiches. I’ve got some ideas for Banh Mi and barbecue already brewing. As for what we’re tribunalizing, that’s a tough one to me. Judging the groups of sandwiches against each other doesn’t really make sense to me, as using alphabetical order to determine the groupings seems way too arbitrary. If we were to group based on some more logical criterion, geographical origin, or style, or something of that nature, then sure, we could declare a winner of each group. But even then everyone would have to do every sandwich, and that’s probably not super practical for some of us. Personally, I think straight reviews and hierarchies are kind of boring without some sort of narrative, because like, I know what roast beef tastes like and I know what cheese tastes like, and I know what they taste like together, and I don’t need someone to tell me about it, and also, are a lot of sandwiches even better than other sandwiches, or just different? I enjoy stuff like Jim’s elaborate “How it was made” type of posts, or like, a good story about the history of a sandwich, or humorous context surrounding the creation/acquisition/consumption of a sandwich. I want to celebrate sandwiches and all that surrounds them.
I agree with Andrew, it’s really interesting to dig into the process of these sandwiches. I may try that with bahn mi.
I’m for sure headed to a restaurant I love here in town that serves the mustard-sauced tart sort of pulled pork. I might get sassy and also grab a sandwich at HoneyOne or Smoque to talk about the differences.
“Barbecue” as it is known to you, is virtually unavailable here. I may get a pork shoulder in the slow cooker and make my own (it’s been done before) but I really don’t have that kind of time at the moment. I know of 2 places where I can get Banh Mi. I’ve only eaten at one of them, so I may do some kind of comparison thing if I can get to the second one (it’s not anywhere I regularly go)… And I don’t know anything about the Chilean sandwich, so I look forward to being educated by you lot. I wouldn’t’ve known about Banh Mi if it weren’t for all of you imaginary friends raving about them on the plane.
hey all.. whit and i live in south philly, which is banh mi central, due to the high percentage of vietnamese who have settled here.. that being said, i strongly dislike pork pate, so maybe i/we could do a tofu/sardine banh mi jawn?
Hell yes, welcome aboard!
BTW, re: pate, one of my favorite ever banh mi is the completely vegan lemongrass tofu banh mi from Nhu Lan here in Chicago. I know pate is kind of a normal ingredient for a banh mi but I don’t think it’s a required ingredient.