Good morning. What’s your favorite store-bought sandwich? In New York, I’m partial to the hot roast beef from Defonte’s in Brooklyn, the Carmine’s Special at Del Fiore’s in Patchogue and the Reuben with coleslaw at the Country Store in Orient.
I’ve gone straight from the airport in New Orleans to Parkway for a fried oyster po’ boy, and from LAX to Langer’s for pastrami. You ever had the bánh mì at Saigon Sandwich House, in Lowell, Mass.? Or the turkey sub at Urban Greens in Anchorage? You should put those on your list.
Sandwiches tell stories of the delicious, stories we should hear and repeat. This week my colleagues assembled a table full of them — 57 sandwiches that define New York City — and this weekend I want to make a few at home.
First up, the halloumi, arugula and tomato sandwich (above) from Baby Blues Luncheonette in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It’s Jake Marsiglia’s Grecian ode to the B.L.T., with the bacon swapped out for cheese, and the iceberg for a lemony arugula salad cut through with red onions.
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Halloumi, Arugula and Tomato Sandwiches
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That’s lunch on Saturday, to be followed with a home-built version of the spicy cumin lamb burger from Xi’an Famous Foods for dinner, on an English muffin. Then, after a fine breakfast of pancakes and berries with cream on Sunday morning, I’ll put together a Scuttlebutt sandwich for lunch, off the instructions of Caroline Fidanza, who served it at her restaurant Saltie for years: hard-boiled egg, pickled beets and carrots, capers, herbs, feta and pimentón-spiked mayonnaise on focaccia. Oh, wow.
And for dinner on Sunday night? Not another sandwich. Instead, I’ll deconstruct one, with a freestyle meal of BBQ shrimp and a loaf of bread to tear apart and drag through the sauce, alongside a mound of cold shredded iceberg lettuce dressed ever so slightly with oil and red wine vinegar. That’s excellent eating, particularly if you don’t peel the shrimp but cook them whole and ask your guests to eat with their fingers, voraciously, over a tablecloth of newspaper.
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Now, it’s nothing to do with panini or grilled cheese, but I’m just starting Ann Powers’s biography of Joni Mitchell, “Traveling,” and I think maybe you ought to join me.
Glass eels in Maine. That’s a big money fishery and a hell of a story for Paige Williams in The New Yorker this week.
Gill Partington has a fascinating review of a book about large-scale literary forgery in The London Review of Books, “a propulsive if unlikely thriller, whose plot hinges on typographical minutiae and sherry parties.” Read that!
Finally, here’s a new Jelly Roll track, “I Am Not Okay.” Still: “We’re all gonna be alright.” Listen to that while you’re sandwiching and I will see you on Sunday.
