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Sandwiches give license to loquacity and silly names. Barking for the sake of barking. Words you want to rollll around your mouth repeatedly. Cause it feels so good.

Some sandwich names that slide like warm butter off my tongue…

TheParmegeddon is served at Melt Bar and Grilled – A place from which you would not want to be barred.

Double R Bar Burger is something I could NOT bring myself to order at the driver’s ed graduation lunch at Roy Roger’s cause the name was so awkward and dumb, like a teenager. When you say it, your voice reverberates with twannnggg. Sheesh, we went to Roy’s. That was the reward for driving our first highway – in a BLIZZARD. I recall that Sharon Goodspeed, petit little thing that she was, ordered a child’s size burger and a mini-fry. Not me. I was nerve-damaged and starved. I’d order it now – TWICE just to say it – if I ever stepped foot in a Roy’s.

Gurueben was the greasebomb of choice, during my late night high school daze, served at the Booeymonger when it was a hole in the wall and I thought I was the coolest little dish since sliced pastrami. The gureuben is no longer on the menu, although the Patty Hearst has endured.

Midget Muscovite was whispered to me by My Main Sandwich Man in NYC in reference to a New Jersey Sloppy Joe. So gullible, I believed this was the actual name of an actual sandwich, but nahhh, it was just JAF barking for the sake of barking. I bit. And I laughed. It’s a wich with just a little Russian. He’s concerned that midget is an outdated term. I dunno, is it?

Love these names. Love saying these words.

So true. By Bruce Eric Kaplan

My main sandwich man in NYC, JAF, writes: Ordered in from Arties’ Deli last night – a big combo sandwich with pastrami, rare roast beef, turkey, Swiss, coleslaw and Russian dressing on rye.  I should have taken a photo of it for you – it was artfully constructed by a professional deli man.  
It reminded me an Allan Sherman’s parody of “Comin Thro’ The Rye”.

Do not make a stingy sandwich
Pile the cold cuts high
Customers should see salami
Comin’ through the Rye 

And the original? Look here.      

From the incandescent
Doug Michels: visionary architect: from a doll’s house to the White House, from Cadillacs buried in Texas to dolphin-astronauts swimming in space, architect Doug Michels’s visions embraced big ideas in the most individualistic, awe-inspiring, and mind-expanding ways.

Chicago is RED HOT when it comes to eating. I was there for what felt like a minute and a half and put away 11 meals with great happiness. Smudges in one corner of the weekend’s napkin reveal DNA from:

◊ A Mother-in-Law Sandwich at Johnny O’s in Bridgeport.

◊ A Teuben at Hot Doug’s where they serve Green River pop and folks line up for days.

◊ A jibarito  (actually two, cold – at two am) from Borinquen, in the kitchen under the cool, dim cast of the hood bulb.  

◊ And hillocks of huitlecoche and chicharron sandwiched between handpatted tortillas (the former) and lovingly formed masa (the latter).

“Masalicious!” was the word from my urban-intrepid HoStEsS.

For not much more than 14¢ you can take a world tour of eats, ricocheting about through the 1st, 2nd and 3rd worlds faster than you can say, “I’ll take one with everything.”

A Teuben, by the way, is brilliant: Corned Beef Sausage with Russian Dressing, Sauerkraut and Swiss Cheese.

And while we’re talking Chicago, which means we are just 2 degrees of separation from a hot dog…

HOT DOG HAUTE DOG
Chicago chefs welcome summer by putting their own spin on a Chicago fave. 

By Bill Daley Tribune critic                
May 28 2008      

Classic Chicago-style hot dogs are legendary, with their all-beef snappiness, poppy seed buns, neon-green relish and racy little sport peppers. It’s the summertime nosh of choice for many, residents and visitors alike. But there are times a classic needs updating.

Photo by Dan Whipps
I did this lately. ok, it’s just a burger. the fries are nice though. and those water droplets on the mater are inspired. ha! pretty good meat too, I’m tellin’ ya. from Roseda Beef in B-more. Very meat-centric outfit with deliciously marbled hunks of dense, neanderthal MEAT.

Coating the bread with spraymount and sprinkling it with sesame seeds, my hand took a tacky layer too. Looked real creepy, the sesame seeds being my skin tone and all, and I thought it would be good, on October 31 to spray my hands and wrists and neck, then sprinkle liberally. Itchy, no doubt, but very scary. My luck, there would be no solvent in the house and I’d be wearing sesame skin for days and days and days, ducking for cover when birds were in sight.

Photo by Renee Comet, on a busman’s holiday in Vancouver

According to an xpert, in Vancouver it is:
G Y E R O W. Phonectically spelllowed wrong so u can say it the American way.

Huh? That’s what she said. O…k…. So just what IS the American way, I ask you?

There is a choice to make when you talk about gyro, even if you are in Vancouver and the spelling is gyerow. You can choose the high road and sound pretentious (that will not be me, seeing as I could barely remember how to spell the word). Yero/Euro/Yurow. Like that. Or you can choose the dumb road and sound normal. Jiro/Jyro/Giro. Like that. Arrogant or ignorant. Not much of a choice.

Same goes for pho. Can you say it? Can you bring yourself to bring the inflection uUP at the end? I cannot, not without apologizing for my pretention. On the other hand, there is the noodle tangle in ones brain that wonders, heaven forbid, if folks think you do not know how to say it. How to say it like you are, ahem, in the know. The knoodle know.

Which makes me think of a dinner I had at the Tabard Inn, served to me by someone for whom English was his second language, and American his second culture. I had a shank. A big one. Musta been pork cause it was not dainty. The waiter lowered the plate, arm aching I suspect from the heft of that joint. “Jabba jabba do,” he said, grinning.

Yabba dabba, yabba dabba dabba do now
Yabba dabba, yabba dabba dabba do now
Yabba dabba, yabba dabba dabba do now
I get by on all my prehistoric knowhow.

Must say, that gyro meat looks big enough to be roasted brontosaurus.

No Longer Frozen in Time

Photo by Renee Comet
Styled by Lisa Cherkasky

Ice cream sandwiches may have been updated for the second millenium, but the full Cleveland will always be in a solid state, calcified circa 1972.
In case you do not know, the full Cleveland is sartorially sanctioned only after Memorial Day and before Labor Day. Halle-fullja-lujah, you can trot out that white patent a full week early in 2008 – more Strolling Thunder than Rolling Thunder. Ice cream and white patent leather – Summer begins NOW!

Lunch Encounters of the Third Kind

Do you know how to do this? Meat tray prints are like lino prints cept way easier and less gashing of your palm. This is how I spent an evening letting my mind recover from too much recent managing of minutiae.

Square Sliders! Kinda.
Photo by Michael Pohuski
Styling by Yours Truly

Grilled Ahi Tuna with Tomato and Olive Chutney on Brioche

Just in from Multi-Faceted DC Correspondent Ellen:

Cindy, Heidi and I had lunch at Mark Furstenberg‘s Breadline this afternoon and I photo-documented the trip for your blog. Attached is a not so styled picture of Cindy’s grilled ahi tuna sandwich, and a description direct from Cindy Olson [below]. We wanted to include her in the picture but she wouldn’t allow it. Felt her looks were not up to par because Freya kept her up all night with fake crying. That is the tale of our recent Lunch Encounter!

And the review….

It is always a pleasure to get a nice fresh fish sandwich. It makes me feel like I am at the beach. This was a good one. The fish had a good flavor, the tomato and olive chutney gave it a little kick and the bread was soft and delicious. YUM.

A bit of vicarious lunch-bunching. Thank you.

And I thought only my child fake cried : )