THE GURGLING COD

The Pretty Good Sandwich

One of the things I have missed the most during the pandemic are sandwiches. Especially the ones that someone else makes for you. I have strong opinions on sandwiches as a rule. If you live in a place where Publix Subs stand at the apex of the sandwich conversation, you get homesick for other sandwiches -- in my case, muffalettas and banh mi, both of which I have painstakingly tried to recreate at home, with varying results. 

The bread is almost always the hardest part to nail. The just rugged enough muffaletta bread, the shatter of a good banh mi loaf are difficult to impossible to get right, at least in my experience. But we had some bias cut sliced pickles left over from another project, and I had a hankering for a cubano, so I took a stab at it. 

Almost everything about this sandwich is wrong. The one thing I did the way I wanted was the roast pork, using Janie Campbell's recipe.* It went downhill from there. Publix was out of Cuban bread, so I had to use seeded. The pickles I had were Mt. Olive, for Pete's sake. I 100% did not want to wait in the line for custom cut deli meat, so I grabbed prepacked Boar's Head ham and Swiss. Our sandwich press died, so I used two cast iron skillets. If I brought this mess to Calle Ocho, I expect that the people there would throw their tiny cups of coffee at me. On the night before the night before Christmas, in a weird and sad time, it was a pretty damn good sandwich. 

All the time, but especially right now, thinking about what is possible, rather than what is perfect seems like a way not to be so down at the corners of your slice all day long. Staring down a Christmas that will not look like any of the other 50 I have experienced, I hope I can keep this in ming. 

*I had to get a whole bone in shoulder, so I used half for the sandwiches, made saucisson sec out of the other half, and made the braising stock for the pork out of the bone, which was fun. 

Guiteau Monday, I'm at the combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, eating a banh mi, ed.

Been a while since I rapped at you. I have no excuse (blogging is dead).  Anyway, stay tuned for news of a big trip to the Lowcountry, but until then, terrifying news from Dallas (is there any other kind): 

As part of its new series of test concepts (including a chicken restaurant called Super Chix and a fast-casual taco shop), Yum! Brands, parent company to restaurants like Taco Bell and KFC, is indeed opening a banh mi sandwich shop.  (Eater) 

The banh mi is a delicious sandwich made with terrifying cold cuts, a few slivers of carrot and daikon, some dubious mayo, and cilantro.* What makes it delicious is the bread. The one thing the Yum! brands family has demonstrated is complete helplessness and indifference to any bread related food substance. The entire business model for Pizza Hut is "Hey! Let's put pizza toppings on fried dough and see if anyone notices." Are they going to bring in the guy who perfected KFC's biscuits to devise a perfect mini baguette with a shattering crust that can be produced by kids in a mall working at Banh Shop in the interval between quitting the Genius Bar and when Foot Locker starts hiring? 

More generally, I am concerned about the martinification of one of my favorite sandwiches. Martinis got popular, and the next thing you knew, someone was trying to sell you a sour apple martini, or French toast martini, or some damn thing. The same thing is happening with banh mi. If you run a restaurant, and you a) buy your eyeglasses on the Internet, or b) you have a Twitter, then if you have a sandwich on a baguette on the menu, chances are you're calling it a banh mi. But it's not. I will take to the Twitter for the rest of the discussion. In any case, if proof were needed, it's just another Guiteau Monday. 

The Sandwich Police: Bon Me

Welcome to a brand-new feature on the Cod -- The Sandwich Police.* The first case involves an establishment the Cod has not patronized, but is under investigation because of its name. Back in the Cod's spawning grounds, AKA TLOTB&TC, there is a truck that sells banh mi. Not mad at that, at all. There are times when it's convenient to purchase a banh mi sandwich, as opposed to spending all damn weekend fixing yourself one from scratch. But! The banh mi truck is called "Bon Me," or the phonetic spelling of the Vietnamese banh mi. They did win a prize, but phonetically spelled foreign names seem more suited to a food court in Branson, MO, than to a prizewinning food truck in the Athens of fucking America. 

Also, the menu suggests that they are not really that interested in making banh mi, considering they don't even take a stab at the banh mi dac biet, the Viet cold cut combo that is #1 on most every banh mi place's menu, and the benchmark sandwich. Instead, they're doing a sort of mix n match pan-Asiany sort of thing that would make sense in an alternate universe where Ikea started in Hong Kong instead of Sweden. Don't get the Cod wrong - it would be nice to see a truck like this parked outside of my office. I would welcome reports from folks who have visited. But in Boston, or any city with a reasonable concentration of Vietnamese-Americans, you should be able to find better banh mi than this. 

*Thanks to Maceo for the image.