It’s been a rich and varied year. Strong swells, waves of glory and gloom, sandwichy peaks without – glory be – any sandwichy ravines or valleys.
Photo by Heidi Leech
Along-for-the-Ride Heidi and I did a not-long-for-the-ride long weekend in sublime St Lou in June. While Twangfest inked the dates on our calendars, you know I had Missouri sandwiches on my mind as an also-seek, with the Crown Candy Kitchen pounding away in my pre-frontal cortex.
The beloved home-away-from-home-at-home Bottle Rockets message board blinked Crown Candy Kitchen into my beam years ago, but I had not been. I had not been!
Here is the view from the Crown Candy Kitchen with the magnificent arch in the distance.
St Louis is a broad riverside city that stretches itself out languidly as old western cities can do. As many times as I had visited, I had not made the drive to Old North St Louis. It seemed far. Of course, it was not. Clear skies above, clear pavement under our wheels.
We were told that the BLT would be on white bread spread with Miracle Whip. Crown Candy Kitchen made good on its rep. Miracle Whip is a name I cannot speak without awe, along with Off, Kleenex, Wonder, Southern Comfort, Fluff, Wrangler and other branded poetics from a time of happy forward thinking. The words bigger, more, faster and further all implied better.
Gloriously sensual, bathed in the creamy white of a vanilla malt, the Crown Candy Kitchen has a heaven of spinning fans, sailing us all into the nirvana of times long gone, although they are not. They are here, time traveled to us.
Loving a band gives a person a hub from which to extend out, spoke by spoke, to a big, broad world of more music, more food via, of course, the people passing you the lowdown on music and food. And other stuff. 
Photo by Heidi Leech
The music and the food is more than plenty though. Much more. So let’s revel and not be greedy.
Well..perhaps we can reconsider the seven deadly sins and how they have not killed us yet. Gluttony, for example, as in a banana split following a magnificent BLT. 
And a chocolate malt. Lust was no doubt in the air. I believe the Crown Candy Kitchen dispenses it via aerosol. 
Nice pour shot by Heidi Leech. She’s not just along for the ride. 
I found bits of bacon in the bottom of my purse the next morning. Good thing since I had all I could manage and then some on my plate. Notoriously loaded BLT. Was I overwhelmed? Nope.BLT + Me = ❤
White onions, sliced thin, in a stupendous heap should – according to my operating manual – accompany most cold sandwiches. They are the crown, the allium tiara, of an old and wise fashioned sandwich. A grandfather sort of thing. He knew, your grandfather, and mine, too. 
Alas, the olive nut sandwich has gone out of fashion. I will not say that I miss it because you might think me archaic. On the other hand…out on an olive limb here, yes I do miss the olive nut. It’s from a time when our choices in food were less vast and we were not buried to the crowns of our heads in excess. I do really miss those days.
I bet this fellow would enjoy an authentic olive nut sandwich.
Glorious days we had in St Louis in the sunny days of June. They will come around again, those June days, and I’ll be coming around too, basking a bit, I hope, and greedily gobbling up food and music, music and food.
When we first caught up with Justin Bruegenhemke in September, he was 100 sandwiches into his goal of eating through the sandwich menus at all nine delicatessens and sandwich shops on The Hill. This past Saturday, January 16, at approximately 11:22 a.m. Central Standard Time, Bruegenhemke officially completed his Hill Topper project with the consumption of the Hogfather sandwich (hot salami, bacon and hot coppa on garlic cheese bread) at Gioia’s Deli.
And on to the highlight, our raison d’etre, 
The Lunch Encounter 
