A Field Guide to the American Sandwich
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
But I will never be impressed with American pizza again .. not after a few weeks in Rome. Best pizza in the world, period.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go dream of a great Chicago pizza pie... Something I doubt will ever be seen in Norway.
http://slice.seriouseats.com/archives/2008/01/a-list-of-regi...
Of course you're never gonna be able to find everything everywhere. That's what makes all these parts of the world unique.
Last time I was in LA I had great sandwich food at places like Fred62's in Hollywood, Philippe The Original downtown, Jay's Burgers (RIP), and so on. You've just got to find these places.
"For the purposes of this field guide, we have laid down parameters. A hamburger is a marvelous sandwich, but it is one deserving of its own guide. The same holds for hot dogs, and for tacos and burritos, which in 2006, in the case known as Panera v. Qdoba, a Massachusetts judge declared were not sandwiches at all. Open-faced sandwiches are not sandwiches. Gyros and shawarmas are not sandwiches. The bread that encases them is neither split nor hinged, but wrapped."
Fair enough, especially since they called out this distinction so clearly. But yeah, no doubt the void you've noticed is almost certainly related to the taqueria culture on the west coast [1].
It's not that sandwich shops don't exist on the west coast -clearly they do, and some of them are pretty good. However, we just don't have the sandwich culture out here. How can you tell? If you're in the mood to stir something up, just ask a couple of people from that region where to get a really good sandwich, and see if you start an argument. See if that argument turns surprisingly personal.
Now, try the same thing with burritos, and you'll get whole different reaction. You may also hear that burritos are vastly better in SF than in SoCal, or you may hear that the question itself is all wrong, because burritos are properly listed as a minor niche item on the bottom right menu of genuinely good taquerias, which you only find in SoCal.
I've been west coast my whole life, but I get the feeling that's the kind of status sandwiches have on the east coast.
[1] I originally considered changing this to "California". But a guy who lived in Seattle for 7 years told me that a taqueria up there (there's my great cite) sold "Mission Style" burritos in reference to the mission district of SF. So, on the basis of that remarkable bit of information, we'll stick with "west coast" here.
I've grown up on the North Shore of Boston and around here we have "Roast Beef" shops. From what I understand, the roast beef you get is distinctly different than anywhere else I've visited. The meat is served warm and very thinly sliced on a burger bun or onion roll. Many people order it topped with barbecue sauce and possibly some cheese, horseradish or mayonnaise. The "beef" sandwiches usually come in two or three different sizes, such as junior, large or super. A common combination of barbecue sauce, cheese and mayo can be ordered by the phrase "three-way."
There tends to be distinct loyalty to your favorite roast beef place. Some roast beef shops also serve pizza, "subs" or possibly fried seafood, but the best tend to focus on roast beef.
There is one chain of roast beef places called Kelly's, but most of the roast beef places seem to be independent.
Here is a slideshow of what to expect: http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/10/where-to-eat-the-best-roa...
What are some other distinctly regional sandwiches?
For instance, the sandwich you describe I've had in variations everywhere I've lived. It's just a roast beef sandwich. The only real differences I suspect are the use in locally obtained ingredients that have a huge potential to making the sandwich different from region to region. That may be why what is essentially a universal sandwich could be better in one place than another. I shall have to remember your recommendation if I ever find myself in the Boston area.
As for your question, growing up in the Southeast the best I can offer off the top of my head is the pulled pork sandwich. There are far more variations than you describe for your beef sandwich. I've seen the sandwich offered in the other areas I've lived, obviously, but not as prevalent as in the Southeast. My wife claims nothing matches pulled pork sandwiches from this one place from her childhood in small town Alabama. I can't say which sandwich for the Southwest as I lived in Vegas and that place is not based in reality. As for Southmiddle, gourmet hamburgers seems to be the current sandwich fad.
I completely understand something being less prevalent in various areas. Certainly barbecue places are generally few and far between here in MA, NH & ME.
I guess it could also depend on the definition of cold sandwich, which could be different region to region.
If not, I don't think you can use a secondary definition of a word as an example for the primary definition when the secondary definition exists solely because of the primary definition.
“Everybody needs money! That's why they call it money!”
http://miniver.blogspot.ch/2004/02/everybody-needs-roger-ebe...
Per a Guardian article linked side-thread, the sandwich was invented by our good Earl for a easily portable and hand-eatable food. One would not call an open-faced nightmare that.
[1] http://www.confiserie.ch/media/catalog/product/cache/2/image...
It's like the Anglosaxon world starts with what we in Sweden would call a double sandwich (since it has two layers of bread) and declare that as the simplest form, thus considering our normal sandwiches to be "open".
Of course, in Swedish the word for an open face sandwich is simply "smörgås", which doesn't translate but does not at all have the layering (sandwiching) connotations. It means basically "buttered bread" ("smör" is literally "butter") although it's an old word.
Language. Such fun.
In Germany we call it Butterbrot (same meaning as smörgåsbröd/smørrebrød) and it's still far more popular than the sandwich (though most commercially available bread dishes definitely are sandwiches).
There's an urban legend (referenced in the Etymology section of the English Wikipedia article) that the sandwich was created by the Earl of Sandwich (or his servant) because he liked to eat buttered bread while playing card games and found it easier to eat if he added an extra slice of bread on top.
If you tell a German to make you a sandwich, you'll most likely get something resembling an actual sandwich. Though it'll likely just be buttered bread with an extra slice of bread on top and just one type of cold cuts or cheese -- because we're just not used to making actual (multi-layer or stuffed) sandwiches.
Subway does none of those. They count Zero on the restaurant scale. They don't even have recipes. They advertise that they do - the new chicken carbonara! Try asking for it. "What do you want on that?" I answer "I don't know, what does it come with?" They say "It doesn't come with anything." Once I dragged the signpost from the doorway over to the counter and pointed at the ad, which included a list of ingredients. "I want that". The poor girl cried.
The pinnacle of incompetence was my son asking for a BLT. "What do you want on it?" My god.
And yes, they tick me off in a way that gets a rise out of me. Charging $9 for substandard sandwiches and providing zero service.
In the UK we generally put one slice of ham into a sandwich. In USA they put two or three packets of ham into a 'sub'. That one sub pushed me and my brother down a road of extreme subs, more meat, more hot sauce.
Oh God, and Taco Bell. I received my order and to my astonishment it looked nothing like the picture over the counter. I kept saying the the lady behind the counter "I didn't order this brown slop, I ordered that delicious looking meal up there."
But a sub from a little supermarket is not a good indicator of what I would say is a typical American sub sandwich. You have to go to a proper deli. The difference is that a proper deli is not using low quality meats. If the sandwich is stuffed with meat then chances are it's cheap, low-quality meat that you probably shouldn't eat anyway. Then there are the other ingredients that a proper deli would have.
Also, for future reference, almost all American fast food chains lie in their presentations.
That town really takes it to the next level in so many different ways.
FULL DISCLOSURE: It's also where I discovered my heroin habit.
Should you find yourself in San Francisco, as I do now, I strongly urge you to visit Darwin Cafe and try some of their sandwiches. They are always interesting, almost always good, and sometimes transcendent. (They only do like 4 sandwiches at a time, and mix them up every couple of weeks.)
Oh, and I agree with another commenter: to me, open-faced sandwiches are very very much sandwiches. How can a salmon tartine not be a sandwich? Or spanish tostas? Madness!
Also, this article made me pine for a good Jewish deli were I live. I haven't had a proper Reuben in years.
never trust anyone who doesn't like a sandwich.
That's Italian. In English, it denotes a specific kind of sandwich.
Peperone is actually a bell pepper in Italian, so no meat, but not spicy either. Peperoncino is the spicy one.
Bell peppers and some other non-spicy peppers are called "Paprika" in German (whereas apparently in English "paprika" refers to a spice made from chili peppers).
Amazing how these words tend to evolve to take on entirely contradictory meanings in different languages.
German loves to do that, too. A cell phone is a "Handy", a projector is a "Beamer", etc.
And then there's Japanese, which takes English words and abbreviates them differently. So "personal computer" becomes "persocom" instead of "PC", "remote control" becomes "remocon" instead of "R/C", "television" becomes "televi" instead of "TV". From that, you might think Japanese people don't like acronyms... until you see that they call a secretary an "OL", which stands for "office lady".
I think it would be a cluster of characteristics and the most prominent example of that category (say, the hamburger) would often be the category name.