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Why oh why oh, did I go to Ohio?

The garbage omelet at Nancy’s, roundish on the ends and high in the middle, is reason enough to visit the buckeye state. Poke around inside to find a liberty garden’s worth of vegetables and the meat six-pack. Nice melty cheese glues the works together.

Stacked high and mighty on an adjoining plate, Nancy’s plainly named Breakfast Sandwich dares you to unhinge your jaw like a boa.

Speak up or your sandwich will be simply bread and sausage. Don’t pass up the lubricating egg, crisp lettuce and not-too-bad tomato slice. Oh, and mayonnaise to keep the fat ratio UP. This sandwich slides down easy.

Saturday night. Go out and catch a band, don’t drink too much. Thinking breakfast? At a counter? Me too.

If you drive with conviction the trip from DC to Nancy’s is roughly 7 hours.By the time you get there the hash browns with sausage gravy will be screaming your name.

The grease-polished flat top at Nancy’s is the picture of omelet nirvana. The sanguine woman deftly handling the eggs will slip a plate in front of you with Sunday morning calm.

Is fixing a plate a thing of the past? Just had dinner with my friend Jane who kindly handed me a plate of watermelon, already cut up and ready for forking. Not too long ago I was lucky enough to be her houseguest and she fixed me breakfast. On a plate. No decisions for me to make. I felt so, well, taken care of.

I don’t know about you, but buffets make me shudder. My preference is to have someone “fix me a plate”. I’ll eat it and be glad, whatever it is. The same applies to daunting hams, mountains of rolls, lolling condiments. Could you just fix me a sandwich, honey?

Brian Henneman, frontman for the Bottlerockets (my favorite band, in case I haven’t already bent your ear on that), claims the best sandwich can be the “random sandwich”. That is, a sandwich that is just handed to you. Something someone put together from the ghastly deli platter. It tastes much better if you do not know its contents.

In Brian’s words:
Sandwiches are funny things. One time, Eric Ambel brought up a sandwich fact, that is absolutely true…
The best sandwich, can oftentimes be one that somebody else made, and just hands to you.
You don’t even know what’s on it.
Usually happens at family functions, or, sports parties.
Hungry? Here ya go…
The random sandwich rocks!
I am a sandwich masochist sometimes. Occasionally, I’ll really enjoy the shitty, bologna and American cheese, on white bread, that you get at a gas station, in the little triangular container.
I’ll just eat it straight from the refrigerator, cold, with no condiments at all.
This is always best when travelling late at night.
In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever had one in the daylight.
Being an Atkins guy, I don’t eat a whole lot of sandwiches, but, I do every now and then.
I like them best if I don’t dwell on them too much.
It’s the “random sandwich” thing…

Personally, I’ve never had the guts to eat a gas station sandwich. I do like to look at them though, through the glass and the cellophane.

Not quite a sandwich, but close enough.

Taco interviews Chris Onstad, creator of Achewood and, while the interview does not touch on sandwiches, I cannot help but think that Chris must be a fan.

The public can endure only so many fresh-ground spices dusted artfully across otherwise empty expanses of white porcelain, can handle only so many television hacks spooning godawful foam over things. I like local places, neighborhood places, where a hot forkful of homemade spaghetti bolognese is treated less like a quivering unicorn egg and more like the tough old workhorse it is. Food can be art and chefs have been highly underappreciated, but there’s a lot of fringe bullshit going on.

Beige, an understatedly luscious color for food, tastefully accented with brown.
Just brown, not chocolate brown, not coffee brown, not caramel brown, just brown.
Thank heaven I did not have to style this for a photo cause someone (photographer, client) would have pressed me to add something red or green. Red and green do not belong.

Whoops, that’s my camera cord swingin’. I was in a bit of a rush – eager to eat – and the screen on my camera is cracked so I cannot “review” a thing. Bear with me. I ain’t no stinkin’ photographer.

The Mediterranean Bakery and Cafe in Alexandria, VA, not the town proper, but just off the Duke Street corridor a ways west of Old Town, is a gold mine. The aisles are packed with an awe-inspiring array of preserved lemons, spices, grains, olives, sweets and on and on. I went in for lunch and came home with a full stomach and an empty wallet. I could not resist buying olive oil, cheese, fat almonds and who knows what all else. The packages performed telekinesis on my finger tips and my cart filled up magically.

There’s a fire burning in that oven and the flat bread topped with meat, herbs and spices seemed to sizzle as the cook slid it out. My shawarma went before the blaze too and then cooled its heels in styrofoam accompanied by lemony yogurt sauce, hummus, crisped pita and a big sprinkling of sparkly chopped parsley.

Look out for the tiny packets of chiclets. I thought my son would get a kick out of the miniscule box, which he did, but the hard, white lozenge inside, which I assumed would encase something sweet, chewable and forbidden mostly, actually tasted like onion to a boy who has never eaten an onion, and to me like ancient, dusty ginseng.

The Sandwich Project caught my eye with its archive of 2927 sandwiches. Thank you for the link, Mom. I figured the project must be British because favorite is spelled favourite. As my editing eye scrolled down and lit on “Mistry special” under recipes, I wondered if that could be a misspelling or perhaps a culinary term unknown to me. Neither, as it turns out, thanks to a little Google sleuthing. A certain Mr. Mistry is an Indian construction tycoon, another Mr. Mistry is one of South Asia’s foremost authors. Aha. Thinkin’ maybe the Mistry Special includes curry or chutney or paneer or naan.

Number 2925 was originated by Hitash Mistry and it reads like it must rock.

Here’s how you do it, in Mr. Mistry words:
Spread naan bread with mango chutney, layer curry over chutney, sprinkle onions and crushed papadoms over top with plenty of cheese Grill until cheese melted.

Not especially detailed, so that leaves me room to jump in with my two cents. Were I to make this sandwich the words “layer” and “curry” would not be my guiding force. Sprinkle maybe. And while sprinkling, I would use sliced scallions or maybe minced white onion. The cheese? I have no idea. Any suggestions? Would paneer work? Does it melt nicely? On to crushed papadoms. What a great idea. Might taste good sprinkled on curried chicken salad too. Too bad I don’t have a live forum or I would try it. It might make a tasty lunch special at the Encounter. Little spinach salad on the side.

A hot turkey sandwich is accepted as a sandwich, although it is not technically correct. Is it not closer to Welsh Rarebit than to a sandwich? I suspect the turkey sandwich originated in closed construction and evolved into its current form, white bread (untoasted) topped with sliced turkey and slops of gravy.

Thomas Head has some interesting thoughts on the origin of the term “open faced”.

OPEN FACED
I couldn’t find a specific entry in the OED, but I think it’s likely formed from open meaning “uncovered”. “Open headed” or “open haired” mean with head uncovered. I don’t think it’s likely that it comes from open meaning honest or generous, as in open handed. On the other hand, it could come from cards–an open faced card has its face up.

Which reminds me of my favorite riddle.
Q: How are the Prince of Wales, a father gorilla and a bald head different?
A: The first one is an heir apparent, the second a hairy parent, and the third has no hair apparent.

Pickle-O!
Pickle-Oh!
Piccolo!

Sam Winikow, an innovative LA 10-year old, invented a truly distinctive sandwich about a year ago, when he was only 9. Sam’s creation, which sprang from his head full cloth, embodies such a simple concept – a pickle chip embedded in an Oreo cookie – with a very sophisticated flavor profile. The pickle-o covers all the taste bases – sweet, sour, bitter, salty and the elusive fifth taste, savory.

“I’m not sure that my son is truly a lunatic for inventing the Pickle-O (pronounced piccolo)”, exclaimed Jeff Winikow. “I haven’t actually tried one, but he swears by them”.

Sam did not specify bread and butter or dill. The Lunch Encounter will pursue this essential detail doggedly.

Evan Sung for the New York TimesFrank Bruni writes lovingly of Katz’s Delicatessen and I think longingly of hand-trimmed pastrami on rye.A scrap to whet your appetite:To revel in its pastrami sandwich, one of the best in the land, with an eye-popping stack of brined beef that’s juicy, smoky, rapturous. To glory in the intricate ritual of the place: the taking of a ticket at the door; the lining-up in front of one of the servers who carves that beef by hand; the tasting of the thick, ridged slices the server gives us as the sandwich is being built; the nodding when we’re asked if we want pickles, because of course we want pickles.To read and see more about Katz’s click here.

Thomas Head, well-respected Washington, DC foodwriter, is at the Lunch Encounter, over there in booth three, eating a sandwich and reading Nigel Slater, one of his favorite food writers. Mr. Slater’s latest book is called The Kitchen Diaries, the record of a year in the kitchen and he often talks about sandwiches. For a taste, read on. Marbled coppa. Mmmm.

A deli sandwich
If the bread is perfect, by which I mean it has a crust that crackles and shatters when you split, if the ham is thinly sliced from the bone and the mustard is fresh and hot, then I am not sure you can improve on a baguette au jambon. But sometimes you need just that little bit more. It is then that the bottled artichokes come out. If you slice them and toss them in olive oil and chopped parsley, they work superbly with the ham. Or, of course, you can add some thinly sliced cheese, a mild nutty Gruyere perhaps. Whatever, it must have mustard too. The really hot stuff that packs a punch.
Too often, all my corner shop has left is soft, open-textured ciabatta. At one time it was the small brown loaves and pita bread that were left hanging around at the end of the day. Now it’s ciabatta. The soft, flour-topped bread makes a good enough ham sandwiches if the ham is paper-thin and Italian, otherwise it just doesn’t feel right. Adding mustard becomes precarious here, the large holes in the bread holding enough to make your eyes water.
What I end up with today more than makes up for the lack of a baguette. I slice the short, slipper-sized ciabatta in half lengthways, then drizzle it with my best olive oil. I cover one half with thinnish slices of fat-marbled coppa, some leaves of arugula, eight pitted black olives and a shower of neat little curls of Parmesan taken off the block with a vegetable peeler. For once I throw in some oil-bottled sun-dried tomatoes. Another drizzle of oil, then I press down the top and squeeze. You have to squeeze hard so that the oil soaks into the bread a bit. A bottle of cold San Pellegrino and an exceptionally sparkling Nasturo beer, and that is supper.
Excerpted from The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater

It’s a modern burger! And for grown-ups! Condiment ingredients include chipotle peppers, green peppercorns, red onions and dill. Check out the pictures and story here. I did the styling, so was up close and personal with this stuff. I recommend all of it.