January List Sandwiches and December Wrapup

Happy New Year, sandwich fans! It’s 2025 now and there are so many sandwiches ahead of us this year, with Phase 3 scheduled to end in July, but a tentative Phase 4 list we’d like to cover that would last us into 2027. We’ll take on these sandwiches one month at a time, 3 sandwiches a month, as we’ve been doing for over 10 years now. We have 3 new sandwiches to announce for January–but first let’s take a look back at the sandwiches we discovered in December!

December was a Month of Meat, and we started with a meaty cheesy mouthful from the City of Sandwiches, Philadelphia’s Roast Pork sandwich, combining Italian-style roast pork, sliced thin and reheated in its own juices, with sharp imported provolone and spicy, garlicky braised greens. Many Philadelphians say that this is actually Philadelphia’s signature sandwich, but despite the title of our piece on it, you should probably not skip the cheesesteak. Next we roasted a big beef bottom round hard over charcoal to make the Pit Beef sandwich, a working person’s classic from the east side of Baltimore for 50 years or more. You should try it just for the Tiger sauce–we like a sauce that bites back! Finally, we ended the month making Porketta from the Iron Range of Minnesota, an aromatic and silky-smooth Italian-style pulled pork served with mustard and peppers in hard rolls. If you roasted it to slicing temperature instead of pulling temperature, you’d have pretty much the exact roast pork you’d need for that Philadelphia sandwich, so next time I’ll be sure to have the greens and sharp provolone on hand as well!

December was, as you can see, a memorable month of meaty sandwiches. Now let’s take a look at what’s coming up in January!

A Princess is a breakfast snack from Bulgaria, with seasoned raw beef spread onto bread and then baked, often with cheese and condiments added. It seems simple but the simplest things have often surprised us, so we’re looking forward to trying them! A Puccia is a large round flattish Pugliese bread roll, often cut open and stuffed to make sandwiches. We’re always looking for an excuse to hit our local Italian deli! And finally, řízek v chlebu is a Czech sandwich featuring a breaded cutlet served between slices of rye bread. Again, a simple concept that could be amazing in execution. We’ll try our best!

There are definitely interesting times ahead for the Tribunal. We hope you join us in experiencing these sandwiches, and the many others ahead in 2025!

Changes to the List

Wikipedia List

• No new sandwiches were added during December. However,
• The Prosperity Sandwich of St. Louis was removed and relegated to a side-note on the Hot Brown entry. It’s not exactly the same thing, though it is pretty similar.
• The Bacon, Egg, and Cheese sandwich was also removed, with a note stating it was a duplicate of the British bacon butty. This change was reverted, correctly.

Our List

• The Chicken Barb (short for Barbecue rather than Barbara, presumably, and obviously spoken with a sharp non-rhotic accent) sandwich from Massachusetts was added as a potential entry in Phase 4
• The Blade Meat sandwich, also a regional specialty of Massachusetts, was added as well.