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February List Sandwiches and January Wrapup

In February, the Tribunal will try Mauritian Roti Chaud, Australian Salad Sandwiches, and the Paraguayan Sandwich de Empanada

Welcome to February, sandwich fans! February is a short month, which is good since January seems to have been about a year and a half long. And yet we still barely snuck that last sandwich of January 2025 under the wire last night. Let’s take a look at those January sandwiches before moving on to what this month holds in store for the Tribunal. In January we started with the Princess sandwich of…

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Řízek v Chlebu, a Czech Schnitzel Sandwich

"A breaded, fried pork cutlet, simply seasoned, is a universal delight, from the tenderloins of Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana to the tonkatsu of Japan. These were no exception." Řízek v Chlebu, a Czech Schnitzel Sandwich

Bear with me for a moment. This one wanders. Some (mostly) Relevant History In the 4th Century, the Roman Governor of Aemilia-Liguria, Ambrose, was unexpectedly named Bishop of Milan. His brother Satyrus, who also held public office, resigned his post to take over management of his brother’s secular affairs. This management required regular voyages by ship to Africa and back. After Satyrus’…

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Apulian Pucce

"Fragrant pork is combined with a soft, milky stracchino along with dried tomatoes, chewy, intensely sweet, sour, and savory all at once; and a handful of peppery/bitter arugula. It's an almost perfect combination of flavors" Apulian Pucce

There are, as I’ve said before, essentially 2 kinds of sandwiches. One type of sandwich is filling-focused, a specific ingredient or combination of ingredients enclosed in bread–a BLT, for example, or pulled pork, or chicken salad. You can argue over which is the correct bread for such a sandwich, but a tuna melt is a tuna melt whether it’s served on rye or wheat or white bread or even a…

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The Princess and the Cheese: Bulgarian Toast

"Feta is egg's natural partner, briny and sharp and sour in ways that complement the mildly savory substance of the egg, and the kashkaval's good melting qualities help glue the egg and feta to the toast." The Princess and the Cheese: Bulgarian Toast

Perhaps my most valuable asset in the past 10+ years of trying to learn about and recreate or at least taste every sandwich I can from around the world has been the Chicago metropolitan area. There are many, many cultures represented in a city this size, and once a particular population hits a critical density, the markets and restaurants to service their culture are not far behind. A content…

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January List Sandwiches and December Wrapup

In January, the Tribunal will be covering Bulgaria's Princess sandwich, the Pugliese Puccia, and the Czech řízek v chlebu.

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…

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Feeding a Crowd: the Iron Range's Porketta

"After hours in the oven the roast fell apart, shredding easily into flavorful, aromatic strands of meat, coated with fat and gelatin, sweet and pungent from garlic and fennel." Feeding a Crowd: the Iron Range's Porketta

The Iron Range is a term used to collectively refer to a series of iron mining areas around Northeastern Minnesota. There are 4 main deposits, discovered in the late 19th Century and mined out over the course of the 20th. In our previous piece discussing the Iron Range, a 2022 writeup of the regional sandwiches called “South Americans,” we noted that during the period from roughly 1890 to 1930,…

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Regional RBs: Maryland's Pit Beef

The US has a number of regional roast beef sandwiches, each with its own distinct characteristics. Buffalo’s Beef on Weck features a caraway-and-salt-topped kummelweck roll; Boston’s North Shore 3-way has a very specific combination of American cheese, mayonnaise, and James River BBQ sauce on an onion roll; Chicago’s Italian Beef is served in a long, dense “French roll” with sweet or hot peppers…

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Skip the Cheesesteak: Philadelphia's Roast Pork Sandwich

"Pork tender and dripping with juices; braised greens garlicky and mildly bitter; sharp provolone salty with the sour/bitter funk of an aged cheese, all contained by a terrific hoagie roll, crusty but light" Skip the Cheesesteak: Philadelphia's Roast Pork

If you are an American, or even an English-speaking citizen of some other country in the world who has a passing familiarity with American culture, such as it is, you have probably heard of the Philadelphia cheesesteak sandwich. You may even know some of the lore surrounding them–how there is an artificially hyped rivalry between the 2 cheesesteak restaurants situated opposite each other on the…

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December List Sandwiches and November Wrapup

In December, the Tribunal will feature Philadelphia's Roast Pork sadnwich, the Pit Beef of Baltimore, and Porketta from the Iron Range of Minnesota

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…

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West Virginia's Pepperoni Roll

"The bread was chewy like a good pizza crust, and the fat rendered from the pepperoni found its way into the roll's crumb, tinting the bread orange" West Virginia's Pepperoni Roll

Pepperoni, at least according to the general consensus, was invented in America. It is an example of salami–which is of course a blanket term for a specific class of Italian salume or “salted meats.” Salume includes whole-muscle meats like prosciutto and capocollo, but salami refers to ground meats, sausages that are cured and fermented and usually air-dried for a period of time. Many articles…

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Pav Bhaji: Top Tier Vegetarian Indian Street Food

"Pav bhaji's base of vegetables takes a back seat to the pungent onion, the deep and lasting umami of the tomato the brightness of cilantro, the sharpness of chilies, the aromatic spices of the masala" Pav Bhaji: Top Tier Vegetarian Indian Street Food

Bhaji is a word in several Indian languages–Hindi, Gujarati, and Marathi at least–meaning vegetables or greens. Culinarily, the term describes 2 different vegetable preparations of which I’m aware. The first is a type of fritter made with chopped vegetables, often onions, suspended in a batter of chickpea flour and deep-fried, similar to a pakora. The second is as part of my own personal…

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The Canteen in Aberdeen: Pheasant Sandwiches

"The vegetables provided plenty of crunch, and the sweet/sour of the pickle relish helped bring out the flavor of the pheasant. More mayo wouldn't be unwelcome--but it would be unnecessary." The Canteen in Aberdeen: Pheasant Sandwiches

In December of 1941, only ten days after the Japanese sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, the people of North Platte, Nebraska gathered around the local depot of the Union Pacific railroad, waiting for a troop train that, they had heard, would be carrying the members of their local National Guard company westward on their way to training and eventual deployment. In the 1940s, before diesel locomotives…

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November List Sandwiches and October Wrapup

In November, the Tribunal will be trying Indian Pav Bhaji, the Pepperoni Roll of West Virginia, and the Pheasant Sandwich popularized in WWII-era South Dakota

It’s November 1st–the kids are in candy comas and temperatures are dropping; Autumn is starting in earnest and if history is any guide, grocery stores near you already have turkeys on sale–you just have to walk past 3 aisles of Christmas displays to get to them. Finally, here at the Tribunal, we’re debuting 3 new sandwiches that we’ll be investigating this month–in November as we do in January,…

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Utah's Pastrami Burger

"The fry sauce is a bit sweeter than a Russian dressing but has more zip than Thousand Island; it works with the pastrami, the American cheese, the burger patty, even the pickles and onion slices--it ties the sandwich together." Utah's Pastrami Burger

In some ways, the hamburger is the culmination of millennia of culinary history, with two chains of causality converging–a line of events inconsequential and impossible to trace, stretching from the beginnings of cattle domestication in Stone Age Mesopotamia and the development of minced meat dumplings in ancient China, through the advent of kebabs and the subsequent spread of minced meats to…

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A Study In Beige: Sicilian Pane e Panelle

"The panelle are all texture, little flavor, and the brightness of lemon juice and the pungency of parsley do little to punctuate the overall beigeness of the thing." A Study In Beige: Sicilian Pane e Panelle

The chickpea is among the first crops that humans domesticated. Human agriculture began in the so-called Fertile Crescent, an area spanning the eastern end of the Mediterreanean shore up through Southeastern Turkey and down along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers through modern-day Syria, Iraq, and Kuwait to the Persian Gulf. The archaeological record shows human consumption of chickpeas at sites…

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Teesside's Parmo, Not Necessarily A Sandwich

"The combination of the Parmesan and panko breading, the nutmeg of the bechamel, and the slight browning under the broiler brought a surprising nuttiness out of the cheddar" Teesside's Parmo, Not Necessarily A Sandwich

I have been bamboozled, suckered, fooled into writing about this particular Northeastern English delicacy. Delicacy is in fact the wrong word–the Parmo is anything but delicate. Originally a breaded pork cutlet–often served with chicken instead these days–fried up crisp, then covered in bechamel sauce and cheddar cheese before being finished under a broiler, it’s been estimated that a standard…

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October List Sandwiches and September Wrapup

In October, the Tribunal will be covering Palermo's Panelle, Yorkshire's Parmo, and Utah's Pastrami Burger.

Welcome to October, sandwich fans! As always, a new month brings 3 new sandwiches for the Tribunal to investigate, and there are some good ones coming! But first, as ever, we must review what we learned in September. September’s Tribunal sandwiches included the Mulita, a Mexican melt from Tijuana involving 2 handmade corn tortillas, plenty of Oaxacan cheese, meats like carne asada or carnitas,…