January List Sandwiches and December Wrapup
Good morning sandwich fans, welcome to Phase 3 of the Sandwich Tribunal and before I go any farther let me ask you this: are these monthly roundup posts useful at all? I started doing them way back in the day when there were other frequent contributors to the site. These days it is rare for anybody but me to write about a sandwich. There may be other good reasons to have these posts and they do provide a bit of structure but is anybody reading them? Let me know what you think.
Over the past couple of days I have reviewed a bunch of sandwiches that were suggested to me mostly as comments on Tiktok but also via a few other channels and I’ve added a couple dozen new sandwiches to our List, pushing the schedule out well into 2025. Our first triad of both Phase 3 and 2023 has some exciting sandwiches in it. But let’s take a look at the final 3 of phase 2 first.
In December we took a look at the Pie Barm of Northwestern England, also known as the Wigan Kebab. Sadly we were unable to travel to Wigan and try the real thing in person but our homemade version was pretty good! One day, Wigan! We also tried a specialty of Montreal that somehow we missed during our 2018 visit, the Wilensky Special. It was terrific, and only reinforced our desire to revisit that city in the future. Finally, we enjoyed the Xis of Southern Brazil. As usual, South American sandwiches go hard!
Now here’s our inaugural triad of Phase 3!
In January we’ll be heading back to Brazil–figuratively speaking–and trying the Acarajé, a bean fritter that is split open and stuffed with stew. It sounds like a lot of work but I suspect it’ll be worth it! Then we’ll do our knockoff version of Alabama white BBQ chicken. Possibly we’ll even revisit my toum-based white BBQ sauce. And lastly, we’ll give arayes a shot, a baked pita stuffed with kofta kebab meat originating in Lebanon that looks absolutely delicious.
Some very tasty things are in our future! I hope you enjoy them as well!
Changes to the List
Wikipedia List
- Some troll vandalized the page by removing every entry that included the word “burger”–hamburger, luther burger, kabuli burger, donkey burger, etc. This was soon reverted
- Something called a “Pattie butty” was added, consisting of a “savoury pattie” featuring mashed potatoes flavored with sage, deep-fat-fried and served in a buttered roll. The same user also added a scallop butty and a fishcake butty. All the above, they say, are served in fish & chips shops in Northern England. We will investigate.
Our List
Many changes have just recently been made to phase 3 of the List, so many that we might as well consider it a new List. If we continue these roundup posts going forward, we will track ongoing changes to this new List in those.
The idea behind this site is to explore the nature of sandwichness by eating every sandwich on the Official en.wikipedia.org List of Sandwiches and then to post here about it, preferably with lots of pictures and also words. Sandwich words.
Long time lurker, first time commenter here! I enjoy the monthly roundup posts, it’s fun to see what you’ll be tackling for the month, as well as the drama of the Wikipedia list getting edited
Hi Jim,
You were wondering whether anybody still reads your post and the answer is an enthusiastic „yes“. I like your relaxed yet systematic approach and your style of writing and I particularly appreciate that you always have a go at making even the most exotic sandwiches yourself, although it‘s sometimes quite difficult to get the same quality of ingredients in your part of the world. Anyway, I hope you keep up the good work. I just read a review of an 1000 page encyclopaedia a guy who worked twenty years on the perfect pizza and then wrote about every possible aspect of pizza-making you could imagine so I‘m waiting for that „Sandwiches of the world, unite!“ opus Magnus of yours that will shake the culinary world. All the best and a happy 2023!
Frank, a German from Brussels, Belgium.
I enjoy reading these posts, in fact that was what motivated me to add the three chip shop butties to Wikipedia. I mean, if some daft Lancashire pie in a bun sandwich is going to be on the list then some proper Yorkshire butties should be too. And also because I’ve read how much you enjoy double and triple carb British sandwiches 😉
For what it’s worth I do think they are genuinely tasty in their own way and the pattie butty especially is treasured in the Hull area as a local speciality. I can send reference material if you like.
(I’m going to make the assumption that Yorkshire/Lancashire rivalry isn’t something that everyone in North America is aware of, unless maybe some of you are Wallace and Gromit fans, so here’s a primer: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/wars-of-the-roses-how-the-rivalry-between-yorkshire-and-lancashire-still-exists-today-47277 )
So it was you, was it? haha thanks!