December List Sandwiches and November Wrapup

December is going to be a killer month at the Tribunal. Some months are better than others, to be sure. We’ve had great months and not-so-great months. But looking ahead at the sandwiches in store for December of 2024, we are excited to try our hand at each of them in a way that we haven’t been for some time.

But before we get into details, let’s first take a look back at the sandwiches of November.

In November, Jim made his favorite vegetarian Indian street food for the first time, having always simply bought it from his local Indian market before, and it turned out fantastic! If you haven’t tried Pav Bhaji before, we highly recommend it, though we can’t quite bring ourselves to call it a sandwich. We also learned, in the course of researching the history of the spicy salami called Pepperoni, that the Earth is a Cat Playing with Australia. That has little if nothing to do with sandwiches, but the Pepperoni Rolls we made were at least sandwich-adjacent. And we started the month with quite a story, of a people who came together to offer up a sandwich to a United States that was, if not perfectly United, then less divided than we see it now. There may be no mythical past in which everybody just got along–I’m sure not every soldier and sailor who came through the Aberdeen train depot in the 1940s was welcomed equally–but the memory of the Pheasant Sandwich of South Dakota lived on for decades in the minds of many of them.

And now let’s take a look at these sandwiches that have us so excited for December!

Philadelphia is known for its cheesesteaks but many of those in the know prefer the slightly lesser known sandwich of the city, a combination of Italian-seasoned roast pork with garlicky broccoli rabe and sharp provolone in the same good hoagie rolls Philadelphia is famous for. It’s hard to pass up a good cheesesteak but when at Tommy DiNic’s or John’s Roast Pork or many other places, the Roast Pork sandwich is at least as good an option, and we’ll find out why. Speaking of meaty street food, Baltimore’s Pit Beef sandwich is another great example, hunks of beef roasted over charcoal, sliced thin and served in Kaiser rolls with tiger sauce and slivers of raw onion. We tried Chap’s while we were in Baltimore several years ago but it’s about time we made this one for ourselves. Finally, we will be returning to the Iron Range of Northeastern Minnesota, home of the South American sandwich we wrote about in 2022, to try the local version of the Italian roast pork sandwich, Porketta, featuring fennel-studded shredded pork in a hard roll.

It will be a month of meat here at the Tribunal in December, and we couldn’t be more excited!

Changes to the List

Wikipedia List

• The Coronation Chicken sandwich was added. We covered this last year, but it’s good to know Wikipedia is catching up
• Matthew McConaughey’s tuna sandwich, which went viral after he talked about it on a podcast recently, was added to the Wikipedia List. It’s just a tuna salad sandwich, folks, even if he does use wasabi mayo. The wikipedia editors apparently agreed, as it was quickly removed.

Our List

We added several sandwiches to our list of potential Phase 4 subjects based on recommendations from comments on Tiktok and elsewhere.

• Broodje Bakkeljauw, a Dutch/Surinamese saltfish sandwich
• Broodje Bal, a Dutch meatball sandwich
• Broodje Smos, an overstuffed Dutch submarine-style sandwich
• Grillworst, a Dutch sausage sandwich
• Lountza, a type of Cypriot cured, smoked pork often served in sandwiches
• Warm Vlees, a sort of catchall category of hot meat sandwiches in the Netherlands, it seems
• Zoutvlees, a Dutch/Surinamese corned beef sandwich

We also cleaned up some of the potential phase 4 entries, giving them their proper names and adding links for reference.