May List Sandwiches and April Wrapup
Welcome back, everyone! April was a challenging month at the Tribunal, with a set of sandwiches that demanded a lot of our attention. As a result, we only barely got all three sandwiches covered by the end of the month, and here we are ready to start it all over again. Hopefully May’s sandwiches will be just as delicious, but a little less demanding.
First, though, let’s talk about the sandwiches we covered in April! We started the month with a full menu of pork, eating multiple renditions of sandwiches using an Argentine cut of pork shoulder called bondiola. No complaints! But it did leave us little time to explore the South African art of the Braai and its associated sandwich, Braaibroodjie! Which of course also required us to make homemade sausages for entirely logical and not arbitrary reasons. And as if those two sandwiches were not demanding enough, we spent the month trying various renditions of the South Side’s Breaded Steak sandwich, another entry in our ongoing Chicago Sandwich Canon series. It’s a lot of sandwich, and there are a lot of great places that serve it!
Now let’s see what May has in store for us at the Tribunal!
In May we’ll be tackling the British Burrito. The what? Some kind of UK/Mexican fusion dish? Well it appears to be more of a pleasingly alliterative neologism, Burrito in form only while highly British in flavor, a Sunday roast with gravy wrapped up in a broad flat Yorkshire pudding. I have been looking forward to this one for years. We’ll also be trying the Broodje Haring, a Dutch analog of the German Fischbrötchen we covered here back in 2016 fearing cured herring with pickles and onions tucked into soft bread rolls. Finally, we’ll be trying to do justice to Broodje Hete Kip, a Dutch treat wherein a spicy, saucy Surinamese chicken dish is stuffed into bread rolls and eaten as a sandwich.
It looks to be an interesting month, and I’m rarin’ to go! Anybody out there have any particular insight into these sandwiches they’d like to share? Reach out here, or on any of our various social media accounts. We’re always interested in learning more!
Changes To The List
Wikipedia List
- Peanut Butter and Pickle has been added–or readded, maybe?–to the list as of April 28, 2023. No effect on our project, as we have already covered it
- The so-called “Camel Rider,” an unfortunately-named Florida sandwich featuring cold cuts stuffed into pita bread, has been added to the List. It has come up once before and I elected at that time not to add it.
- My reasoning is this: The sandwich’s name appears to be a based on its use of pita, a Levantine flatbread, and references a slur against middle-eastern people.
- Similarly, I have not covered some Midwestern sandwiches featuring Italian sausage that are named after slurs against Italian-Americans, though I have acknowledged their existence.
- If I cover this sandwich, does that mean I should also cover the G**nea Grinder? The Hot D*go?
- I can’t make Florida behave, but I can at least refuse to celebrate their raving xenophobia.
What do you say, Tribunal fans? Is the sandwich notable enough to document it despite the discomfort it gives me to reference its name? Is there anything special or unique about throwing cold cuts into a pita?
Our List
No changes to our list have occurred in a few months. I’m pretty sure there are more sandwiches out there though. Preferably sandwiches without hurtful names.
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.
I can’t claim to be an authority on the “British burrito”, however I do live in Yorkshire and have seen these on sale.
The more commonly used name is a Yorkshire pudding wrap, I’ve never seen anywhere advertising it as a burrito so maybe that’s just one vendor’s name for it? If an American had asked me where to get a British burrito in Leeds I’d have pointed them towards Barburrito (a British Chipotle-esque chain that sells Mission style burritos).
The BBC appear to have covered the dish https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-41361803 and it even looks like the supermarket Morrisons sells ready made wraps for it https://groceries.morrisons.com/products/morrisons-yorkshire-pudding-wraps-twin-pack-565323011
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone talk about eating one though. Maybe I’ll ask people at work tomorrow if they have tried one!
Thanks for the comment! Yes, when I initially came across “British Burrito” I believe it was on this Atlas Obscura page and I almost immediately put it on my to-try list. As the time to actually research and make this has drawn near, I am finding that searching for “Yorkshire pudding wrap” does yield more consistent results. But “British Burrito” is where we have it on the List and I’ll be damned if I change it to “Yorkshire Pudding Wrap” now and alphabetically re-sort it back down to the bottom of the list where I won’t get to it for 2 more years 🙂
Oh, of course, I want to see what you make of it now and if you might find a British double carb sandwich that you enjoy (I’m assuming that you will be including roast potatoes?).
If you’ve never had the usual kind of Yorkshire puddings before, definitely try those too – I don’t think that the wrap version will exactly do the dish justice – probably the same could be said about the whole roast dinner in fact, I rather think that it is better on a plate than contrived into a wrap but I guess that Sunday lunch on a plate isn’t going to cut it in the street food world.
The precursor to this wrap I guess is the “whole dinner in a giant Yorkshire pudding” which has been around for a fairly long time as a slightly more casual version of a roast dinner.
What the what??? As an Italian American I appreciate you not including those horridly named sandwiches. Please don’t or redact the names somehow. Who names these things and how are they still in existence?? And f*ck Florida outside Miami the food sucks imo. I refuse it acknowledge FL and I have family there:
I’m sorry, I don’t care for the names either. The HD is I believe still on the menu at some old school Italian joints in St. Paul Minnesota, while the GG was until recent years served by a popular vendor, now defunct, at the Iowa State Fair.
It’s astonishing to me that you haven’t covered broodje haring yet, it’s such a staple in the Netherlands. I certainly had a lot of it over there. If I had access to maatjesharing (virgin herring, i.e. caught before it grows roe or milt) I would wirte this up for you, but I don’t, so I can’t.
My friend I would very much appreciate any guidance you can send my way on that one. I also am concerned about being able to get the right fish but I’m going to see what I can find. I understand that the sandwich is usually built with a raw, marinated/pickled new herring?
It’s not quite raw, though people often refer to it that way. It’s very lightly cured in a lightly spiced brine and intended to be used in the short term. Tradition describes a specific cleaning method (apparently an enzyme in the fish’s pancreas helps with the curing so they’re left in), but it really just is a fish with the head, gills, guts, and bones removed, spatchcocked open (and folded back into it’s natural shape if you eat them raw on their own). It matters that the brining is very light, and Dutch law limits your ability to name something ‘maatjes haring’ to the young herring caught and sold to be eaten (i.e. not preserved) during the appropriate season, between May and August (though really July). The stuff you and I are likley to get overseas will be saltier, if only because it has sat in its brine for longer, and will be the product of some other herring-consuming nation (the ones here in Australia tend to be from Poland).
The sandwich, like most Dutch sandwiches, is very simple: soft white roll, the herring, some raw onions, and maybe a sprinkling of herbs like parsley.