10 Years of Sandwiches
10 years ago today, on August 21, 2014, I registered the domain sandwichtribunal.com.
A Quick Recap
I’ve told the story before but essentially, early in 2014 my friends Josh and Thom and I started tweeting pictures of sandwiches at each other, basically bragging about the delicious things we were eating. We started calling ourselves the Sandwich Tribunal in jest.
We continued throughout the year, including my first-ever catfish sandwich at Bolton’s in Nashville, an all-time great
Finally, on the morning of August 21st, after a previous discussion about what a great page the Wikipedia List of Sandwiches was (and continues to be)…
And by 9:18am…
Over the next few hours, I threw a bunch of existing sandwich photos I had together into the montage image that still serves as the site’s background, I designed the very basic logo that we’re still using to this day, and I went out and got lunch at J.P. Graziano so I’d have a first post for the site. By that afternoon, sandwichtribunal.com looked a lot like it does today, but with about 600 fewer posts, 9,000 fewer photos, and about 700,000 fewer words.
10 Years Later
Several months ago, I noticed that Le festival de la grillade de Saint-Zotique, which I mentioned in 2021 when writing about the grilled pork belly sandwiches celebrated by the festival, was also having a 10th anniversary this August. In 2021, I was chosen to receive free tickets to that festival–randomly, not because of my fake Sandwich Celebrity status–and was unable to attend, but I have wanted to check it out ever since. So I reached out to my friend and fellow sandwich expert Jon Ostrander, aka Sandwich Dad, and asked if he’d like to go on a French Canadian adventure with me.
And you know what’s next:
Montreal
We ate a lot of sandwiches over the next few days, so many that sometimes I was inconsistent about getting photos of the sandwiches we ate! If you see photos below that look familiar, or seem out of place for an August trip, they’re probably from my trip to Montreal with Mindy in 2018! But that’s where our weekend started, in the Mile End neighborhood of Montreal, at a place I missed on that 2018 trip but I wrote about in 2022, Wilensky’s Light Lunch.
I neglected to get my big camera out for this but when I compare a photo from my 2022 post on this sandwich to a still from the video I took at Wilensky’s last week, I think I nailed it. I toasted mine in the press a bit longer, so my cheese was meltier and my bread crustier, but otherwise these sandwiches look quite similar. And the kosher salami/bologna combination at Wilensky’s was very much like the salami and bologna I’d picked up from Romanian Kosher Sausage Company here in Chicago when I made this sandwich, the cold cuts sliced relatively thin and piled just high enough that the meat was the focus of the sandwich, griddled just enough to brown the edges a bit and heat the salami through without drying it out. This was a skillfully made sandwich, simple but well designed, with just enough mustard to cut the fattiness of the sausage without intruding. I wanted to eat a dozen of them.
But we had more eating on our agenda for that day. Just up the street from Wilensky’s you’ll find Fairmount, one of the well-known purveyors of the Montreal-style bagel. But around the corner and a couple blocks away there are multiple locations of Saint-Viateur, which right or wrong is the bagel shop where I stop.
Montreal style bagels are thinner than their New York cousins, sweeter, with a larger hole that makes them somewhat less suitable for sandwiching. But fresh out of the oven, a sesame seed bagel from Saint-Viateur doesn’t need anything else, no cream cheese, nothing. It’s soft with a crisp edge, sweet with a nutty and aromatic sesame flavor, reminiscent of a sesame ball you might get with dim sum at a Chinese restaurant. I do like to cut them open and swipe a little cream cheese or smoked salmon spread inside regardless, but sometimes I can’t wait that long.
But we didn’t dig into too many of these beautiful bagels because Montreal’s sandwich star awaited us, the smoked meat sandwich from Schwartz’s Deli, about a 1.5 mile walk from Saint-Viateur back toward the northeast end of the Mont Royal that gives the city its name.
On the previous trip, Mindy and I had been discouraged by the length of the line at Schwartz’s and had opted to get takeout instead, which bypassed the line and ordered inside a different entrance off to the side from the main dining area. But this time, Jon and I opted to wait and experience the dining room/ It’s a small space, long and narrow, with about 8 or 10 tables with 6 chairs each down the left and a row of barstools along a counter to the right. The walls are covered in vintage posters and newspaper articles and art dedicated to Schwartz’s itself. The line was not terribly long, and within 20 minutes or so we were seated at a table across the back, sharing the 6-top with a small family of 3.
It was a warm day and the AC was not working and we’d just walked a mile and a half. Within moments I was drenched in sweat. But sitting inside does appear to have its benefits. Below, I have photos of our carryout sandwich from the previous visit alongside photos of the sandwich I had this time. When we ordered our sandwiches inside, we were asked an additional question that we did not get at the carryout window–how did we want the sandwich? Fatty, lean, medium? I opted for medium fatty and it made all the difference between the dry sandwich I’d had previously and the tender, falling-apart perfect mess I received this time.
Salaberry-de-Valleyfield
After Montreal, we spent our non-festival time in the town of Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec, which I had compared to my hometown of Quincy, Illinois in my piece on the area’s signature sandwich, the very item we were in town to try, the Grillade.
In person, the comparison didn’t really stand up. Salaberry-de-Valleyfield seems to be a fairly rich town, with bars and restaurants on the canal where boaters could tie up and step straight onto the pier for a drink or a meal. They hold their own regatta annually off a small island park in Bay Saint-François called Delpha-Sauvé Park, which was also hosting a Triathlon on the weekend we visited, with youth and adult categories. The kids were at the tail end of the bike leg when we arrived, and we added our shouts of encouragement to those of the volunteers as they passed.
Neither Jon nor I were inspired to attempt a Triathlon ourselves. Additionally, as opposed to our previous experiences in Montreal, where much of the populace is fluent in English, we found that in that part of Quebec very few people know more than a few words of English, so our shouts may have been strange and horrifying to the children. I can only apologize; my intentions were good.
While in Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, I finally got to try some Quebecois sandwiches I have written about and made at home but had never experienced in their native habitat: the Guédille, or at least one iteration of the Guédille, and of course the Grillade. We encountered both at Restaurant le Bidon, which I mentioned in the grillade post along with a photo I found of their grillade on a Google Image Search.
We had dinner at Le Bidon on Friday night along with Jon’s friend Noémiie, before heading to the festival grounds in Saint-Zotique for the pre-festival “disco night.” Le Bidon’s menu offers many familiar options–burgers, hot dogs, fries, chicken nuggets, onion rings–along with some local flair. Poutines–many flavors, in many sizes. Bacon poutine, hot dog poutine, Italian poutine, poutine with chicken or Montreal smoked meat. They have “pain poutine” on the menu, which appears to be poutine ingredients served in a hot dog bun. They offer 2 different varieties of guédille, which they spell goudille in what seems to be a common variant: goudille choux (cabbage), which is essentially coleslaw in a hot dog bun, and goudille poulet (chicken), which has a thin layer of unseasoned, undressed white meat chicken underneath the coleslaw. And of course they sell grillade, either in a sandwich or by the sack.
I requested a goudille poulet along with a grillade sandwich and the smallest possible order of fries. The goudille was, sadly, not good. The bun contained 90% a vinegar-based slaw that was fine but not very interesting, and 10% completely dry shreds of chicken breast. The hot dog bun was nicely toasted, but the dry chicken could only do so much to protect it from the wetness of the slaw and over time, the sandwich took on the consistency of, well, the substance they named the sandwich after.
The grillade sandwich was better, served on good Villaggio Italian bread, untoasted, with several slices of seasoned pork belly (the namesake grillades) cooked crisp, a slice of decent tomato, and a bit more onion and mustard than I thought the sandwich needed.
Disco Night
Words cannot describe, nor can the following two brief videos that I took, how much stupid fun that pre-festival Friday night at Saint-Zotique beach was. The entertainment was an act called Alter Ego Showband that was, at base, a cover band. But it went beyond a cover band. They played medleys of hits from the 80s, 90s, classic rock, latin music, country music, etc., in nonstop increments of 2 minutes or so per song. The band consisted of a drummer, a guitarist, a bass player (though there must have been a keyboardist hiding away somewhere or a prerecorded track that they played along to), and 7 vocalists, 5 women and 2 men. The vocalists dashed offstage in pairs or larger groups, making quick costume changes and coming back onstage just as one song would lead directly into another, dressed in appropriate costumes to perform each song–a Michael Jackson black-and-red leather outfit for Thriller (along with a dancing crew of zombies), cowboy hat and skirt for Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, a Vanilla Ice impersonator for Ice Ice Baby, a Billy Idol impersonator for Mony Mony.
Silly? Certainly. Ridiculous? Without a doubt. Nonstop fun for a solid 2 hours? Believe it or not, yes, these people did not stop moving. Even the guitarist and bass player danced along at times. And you haven’t lived until you’ve heard an extremely white French Canadian try to do 90s American hip-hop.
Saint-Zotique
Saturday was the day of Le festival de la grillade de Saint-Zotique, which began at 1pm and ran late into the evening, with more musical acts due to play, French-Canadian country music acts Andie Therio, Phil Lauzon, and Lendemain de Ville along with fireworks after dark. By the time we arrived at 1:30 though, the grills were going and the beers were flowing, and samples of grillades were being handed out to the crowd for voting–not entire sandwiches, just pieces of the seasoned pork belly for the most part, though a few stands had sandwiches, tacos, etc. for sale as well.
Many of the grillades on offer were simple, just seasoned pork belly, whether cooked on a flattop griddle or directly over charcoal, served crisp and shattering or fatty and flexible, featuring the flavor of the pork and the seasoning mix unencumbered by accountrements other than perhaps the smokey charcoal flavor of a grill. Some added a bit of marinade or sauce, such as the bracingly sour, citrus-heavy offering from the city of Vaudreuil-Dorion or the delicious sweet mint glaze that the municipal team from Pincourt used. (PRO TIP: the two of those together? Dynamite) Some provided fancier samples, such as grillade with mango salsa cupped in a tortilla chip as served by the team from Notre-Dame-de-l’Île-Perrot. Others were odd, such as the grillade with chocolate sauce offered by Saint-Zotique’s own team.
There were 3 categories to the competition: the Commercial competition, featuring various area restaurants serving versions of the grillades from their own menus; the Amateur competition, featuring local family teams putting together their best grillade recipe to impress the judges; and the Municipal competition, where a team from each of 4 local towns represented their community (along with a team from Saint-Zotique that wisely recused itself from the competition).
There were QR codes all around for voting, but I’m not sure what happened with the People’s Choice part of the competition, or if those votes were taken into account at all. Between 4:00 and 5:00 pm, a judges table was assembled and each entry sampled by a council of local elders including the mayor of Saint-Zotique, who emceed the subsequent presentation of awards–entirely in French, which explains how it is that I know nothing about how the votes were counted. That bright, citrusy entry from Vaudreuil-Dorion took the Municipal award, though I’d have given the edge to the mint glaze from Pincourt instead (and if someone had the bright idea to combine the two, there would be no contest).
Third place in the amateur competition went to my favorite team, a simple charcoal-grilled entry that was seasoned nicely and had the perfect amount of smoky charcoal flavor to it. Plus they loaded me up with more pork belly every time I walked by the stand. The second place team La Famille’s entry was similar but a bit saltier and less well balanced, and I’m having a hard time remembering which sample belonged to winner Les Chauves but I don’t think there was a bad entry in the amateur bunch.
My favorite team, Taco Shack (a name that the Francophone mayor had difficulty pronouncing during the presentation) won the commercial portion of the competition much to my delight. They were offering both a standard grillade and a spicy version seasoned with dried Carolina Reaper chilies that they grew in their own garden. I bought a grilled cheese sandwich from them featuring the spicy grillades with barbecue sauce and a marble cheddar in white bread along with both spice mixes to bring home. Congratulations, Taco Shack!
Toronto
Our trip was bookended with visits to the St. Lawrence Market in Toronto, Ontario. Though we spent much of the weekend in Quebec, in the vicinity of Montreal, several hundred kilometers to the northeast, for multiple reasons it worked out better for Jon and I to meet in Toronto, rent a car, and drive to our destination. So I’d flown into Billy Bishop airport in downtown Toronto, taken a 10 minute shuttle ride from the airport to Union Station in downtown Toronto, walked a further 10 minutes to St. Lawrence Market, and made a beeline to Carousel Bakery for a peameal bacon sandwich.
I wrote about peameal bacon in 2021, making my own of course and enjoying it utterly. It is a simple sandwich, just slices of cured pork loin coated in cornmeal, griddle-fried, with crisp edges but plenty of juicy flavor left in the middle, served in a bakery bun with a choice of mustards. The version I had from Carousel Bakery offered no surprises, but none were expected. Peameal bacon is exactly what I thought it was, and it’s terrific. Ordinary, in the way that something that has become a local institution becomes thought of as ordinary. Ordinary, in the way that a simple, well-made ingredient served in good bread with the right condiment can’t help but satisfy, though it will not launch any revolutions.
In 2021 when I wrote my piece, I also asked my friend Arlo who lives in Toronto to write up the sandwich, and his piece on Peameal bacon has become one of the more popular entries on this blog over the past several months. Is peameal bacon having A Moment? I don’t know. But St. Lawrence Market is great, the kind of permanent market mingling long-time favorite local businesses with interesting newcomers–fish markets, cheese markets, meat markets, produce markets, even a flea market in the tent next door–that I’ve seen in nearly every major city I’ve visited in North America.
Cleveland has West Side Market. Philadelphia has the Reading Terminal Market, not to mention the Italian Market on South 9th Street. Baltimore has Lexington Market. Raleigh, NC has the State Farmer’s Market. Detroit has the Eastern Market. Chicago doesn’t really have something like this, and it’s a shame.
But on my way in I met up with Arlo and a few other work friends who happened to be in town and had lunch while waiting for Jon, and on our way out Jon and I both got peameal bacon sandwiches again at Carousel Bakery. This time, on Jon’s advice, I ordered it with HP sauce instead of mustard (though I added some horseradish as well because I like that kick). And this time, on a Sunday when the market was about to close, they must have been out of the ordinary buns they used because this sandwich came on much better bread.
Sorry about the weird angle on that shot, but I was famished and tore into this sandwich before I remembered the existence of cameras and sandwich blogs. It may not have been the best sandwich I had all weekend–there would be some stiff competition for that title–but it was an excellent way to end the weekend. Shortly after this, I walked in a light rain back over to Union Station and waited for the Porter Airlines shuttle back to Billy Bishop airport, and then I sat in that airport’s comfortable lounge reading a Jack Ryan novel for the few hours I had left before my flight departed.
So thank you Canada! That was a great trip! Thank you to my friend Jon aka Sandwich Dad, who was a terrific traveling companion for the weekend. Thank you to all the nice people, at the grillade festival, at all the restaurants, to the kind Francophones who were patient with me over the weekend. Thank you to my friend Arlo for meeting up with me too, and to Julio and Wilmer and Christian from Honduras who stopped for lunch with me as well. Thank you to Jon’s friend Noémiie, who came out for a few drinks with us on Friday night and whose life ought to be a novel one day. Thank you to Caoimhe or Keeva or Kiva (but probably Caoimhe) from Belfast who randomly sat at our table at the pub on Thursday night and chatted us up.
Mostly though, thank you to Josh and Thom for having this crazy idea with me all those years ago and helping me launch what has turned into the most rewarding work I’ve ever done; thank you to our other friends who’ve written for the site along the way: Crit and Brian and Marilyn and Mary, Greg and Arlo and Ace and Marinus; and a great big thank you to all of you, the people who’ve been reading the Tribunal’s sandwich adventures, for a month or a year or the whole decade. That’s a whole lot of words you just read–good words, though, sandwich words–and the Tribunal appreciates you. Happy 10 years to us!
I like sandwiches.
I like a lot of other things too but sandwiches are pretty great
Congratulations on ten years of delighting readers with your adventures. You are truly sandwich savants–the very best in the blogosphere. Here’s to ten more years (and hopefully a few less calorific) of sandwiches.
Thanks!
Amazing work. Congratulations on 10 years and, most importantly, for staying true to the amateur DIY spirit of old-fashioned internet foodie fun.
Thanks, friend! Sorry I haven’t followed up on that lunch we talked about, maybe we can make something happen in the next month or two? I sure hope so!