Unbreaded

The United States Of Sandwiches (Part 2)

Southern BBQ, outside of Savannah
Despite the talk about urban multiculturalism, the most complex culinary unions in this country were in the rural south, where Afro-Caribbean slaves and European landowners entwined their open-fire cooking techniques and native ingredients into “plantation”-style cooking.  There is probably no better example of this hybrid than the all-day affair of barbecue, arguably America’s most distinctively regional food.

There are about a zillion places to get barbecue in the south and probably just as many opinions about where and why. I relied on the advice of Steven Raichlen (grilling expert and author of many books, including BBQ USA which features a 500 year national timeline and was also a great help to me about Memphis barbecue for another Travel + Leisure story) who told me that as cultish as barbecue has become, it was also the country’s most democratic form of cooking: slaves may have cooked it, but landowners staged it, and if you look at history you will see great pit masters from diverse backgrounds.

(NOTE: It has been several years since I was here.)
At the Pink Pig (also Raichlen’s suggestion), barbecue continues its everyman reputation except this time every “man” is Rita Thomas, the coifed and cultured pit master. A former nurse who inherited the restaurant from her brother, Thomas believes in running a family business—Mom behind the register, son over the cutting board: “My Daddy always had a smoke going.”

Out back, she opened the door of the pit, letting me get a whiff of spice-rubbed Boston Butt roasts (actually the upper portion of the pork whole shoulder), smoking over a combination of oak and hickory. The result was a sandwich of hand-chopped meat with silky interior and crispy edges on a delicate, almost sweet dinner roll, accompanied by a trio of sauces:  Original Honey Mustard, Low Country Fire, and a spicy vinegar and mustard combination, Gullah Spice (rooted in the distinctive community of heritage rich and reclusive West African-Americans who live on the semi-tropical sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia).

Later that night, when I pulled my tee shirt over my head, I smelled that smoke pit all over again. Not in that reeking “morning after” way. But a fragrant mist with the power to conjure up memories, like a fine perfume.

Cubano, Miami
With a similar back story to other port sandwiches, the Cubano was reportedly designed to feed workers—in this case, Cuban cigar factory workers transported to southern Florida (particularly in Key West and Tampa) in the late 1800’s. However, it was the late 1980’s before I had my first Cubano, just about the time Chef Norman Van Aiken was shaking things up with something he called “New World Cuisine” (although it seems commonplace now, there was an exciting newness to his combination of local Latin and Caribbean flavors with traditional European techniques) and drawing young chefs from all over the country. The hours were long, the nights late, and the sandwich, the Cubano.

Miami is a nocturnal city—especially in the stretch known as “Little Havana,” where the Cubano is a vital part of the late night landscape.  In the same fashion as other iconic regional sandwiches, a Cubano starts with the bread: an 8-inch roll typically made with lard, which accounts for its lightness. (Many places make a smaller version on sweeter bread called media noche or “midnight” sandwich.) There’s typically a slathering of butter under the sugar-cured Bolo ham and Swiss cheese. But the real flavor is delivered by slow-roasted marinated pork (lechon asado), always cut by hand. That tiny dagger of tanginess needed to pierce the richness of the fillings is supplied by thinly-sliced pickle and its juices. After spending time in a plancha (or press) to toast the bread and warm the ingredients in their own steam (flattening the sandwich by about 1/3), the Cubano is cut the diagonal to deliver the most possible melted cheese in ratio to the bread.

The next two locations don’t qualify as “ports.” But I include them in my map trace because each represents a “soft” boundary, where cultures drift into each other and instinctively intertwine. And although hamburgers and tacos aren’t technically considered to be “sandwiches,” each falls in line with the notion that multiculturism finds its natural home within some sort of bread.

Green Chile Cheeseburger, New Mexico
Although they are practically non-existent in the rest of the country, you can get a green chile cheeseburger just about anywhere in New Mexico. Now a green chile cheeseburger is not some gimmick, like when a French chef stuffs a burger with foie gras and viola, a hundred dollar lunch. Ever since Sixteenth Century Spanish Conquistadors led settlers along the El Camino Real (the first European road in North America, stretching from Mexico City to Santa Fe), this land has been part of the Mexican frontier, and on it they grow more green chiles (the state’s top cash crop) than anywhere else in the country. The standard bearer is the fleshy Hatch green chile, available fresh in season or fire roasted, peeled and fresh-frozen in their own juices.

As to the actual burger, without becoming all Proustian about it, here’s how I got mine. I was sitting in the Tasty Freeze in Tularosa, New Mexico, eating fried green chiles out of a white paper bag, when the woman behind the counter—who introduced herself as Debbie—said since I liked them so much, maybe I should try her sister Linda’s green chile cheeseburger. Two hours later, I was sitting at the counter of the Airport Grill in the Alamogordo Airport (located near the Air Tanker Base of the Lincoln Zone Dispatch Center for wildfire control) doing just that: enjoying Linda’s tender, oversized burger topped with a few spoonfuls of diced fire-roasted green chiles secured by a dome of smoothly melted white American cheese, set upon on a 5-inch diameter bun.

Fish Taco, San Diego
The fish taco is a link to the lobster roll (Maine) and fried clam sandwich (Connecticut), probably created when some hungry guy wrapped the catch-of- the-day in bread as a way to produce a heartier meal. It’s nearly impossible to pinpoint the exact day any regional sandwich makes its first appearance. But Ralph Rubio (founder of Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill) has a fairly good idea about the modern fish taco, tracing the convergence of cultures—Californian, Mexican and surf—in his own life to 1973.

Rubio was on one of his annual San Diego State University Spring Break surfing trips to the Baja Peninsula. He remembers the beach-shack fish tacos he got there for 50 cents as “crave-able,” a feeling he says he didn’t get from other foods. In 1983, Rubio opened his first walk-up stand in a converted Orange Julius on Mission Drive in San Diego and caught the wave. When I spoke with him for the Travel + Leisure story in 2004, he was twenty-one years into his venture, with 150 regional stores and over 50 million fish tacos sold. Here’s how Rubio built his business from the ground up.

- six-inch corn tortilla (heated on the grill)
- beer-batter fried fish (Rubio’s uses Alaskan Pollock—a mild white fish—and gets an extra crispy crust)
- crema blanca (light mayonnaise with a touch of yogurt for smoothness and tang)
- blended salsa (basically the same ingredients as salsa fresca, but smooth—not chopped)
- shredded cabbage (provides the crunch and won’t wilt like lettuce)
- squeeze of fresh lime juice

Banh Mi, San Francisco
Working up the coast to Saigon Sandwiches in San Francisco, you’ll find the banh mi, an interesting example of a double immigration sandwich.

The baguette-style roll (lightened with rice flour) emerged during the French colonization of Vietnam. But the Vietnamese who migrated to the United States following the Saigon evacuation in 1975 brought the sandwich to us. Banh mi means bread (you must specify the filling) and those who short hand this relatively new sandwich as a “South East Asian hoagie” undervalue the distinctive flavorings, like sweet red pork barbecued pork sprinkled with slivers of lightly pickled cucumber and carrot seasoned with jalapenos and cilantro.

The increasing popularity of banh mi parallels Vietnamese immigration: Hawaii, the West Coast, and eventually working its way across the country to gain a foothold in the East. But the sandwich is still far from main stream. The best banh mi remain in their own ethnic neighborhoods, usually in small storefronts. Years ago, I got my first taste at Saigon Sandwiches where two surprises awaited. The good one: (at the time) the bahn mi was less than three bucks. The other: The counter women took orders from every person in line and made all the sandwiches at one time.

Italian Beef and the Borinquen Restaurant, both in Chicago
Moving east to Chicago, you come across another sandwich which is distantly related to Philadelphia’s hoagie (and thus, the Muffaletta): the Italian Beef. Unlike the hoagie’s layering of cured pork meats and cheese, the Italian Beef is the bountiful product of the city’s Union Stockyards—beef so thinly sliced it resembles a meat mille feuilles—topped by another sort of “salad,” called Giardinera. I got mine from Al’s # 1 Italian Beef at its landmark Taylor Street location.

The lineage of the Italian beef sandwich is impeccable.  Anthony Ferreri, a turn-of-the-century sandwich peddler who sold his wares from vendor trays (like those used in baseball stadiums) and also catered “peanut weddings” (for Italian immigrants who couldn’t afford more) begat Al and Frances Ferreri who opened a small curbside Beef stand in 1938 (with Frances’ husband Chris Pacelli) that eventually moved to Taylor Street and became Al’s # 1 Italian Beef, (at the time I went) still run by Frances’ sons—the Pacaelli brothers.

So are the ingredients.

- Top sirloin butt: oven roasted in water with garlic and “secret” seasonings to make the flavorful “juice” in which the sandwiches are dipped.
- Giardinera: a fermented vegetable relish made with hot peppers and celery so finely shaved that the mixture simply melts away when it hits the hot beef, soaking its flavor all the way through the sandwich
- Gonnella Bread: baked under the direction of the same family since 1886; crisp-crusted and substantial enough to stand up to dipping

There are no seats at Al’s—but then you can’t really eat this sandwich sitting down. Instead, unwrap your sandwich and spread the paper out on the counter in front of you. Lean the top half of your body forward (over the counter) while tilting the bottom half away (as though you are hugging someone and want your shoulders but not your hips to touch) so the juices drip down onto the paper (missing your clothes and shoes). When you’re done, wrap the paper up and throw your mess away.

Jibarito
Just when I thought I had picked the city of Chicago clean, a chef named Randy Zweiben took me to eat a sandwich I had never seen before or since.

According to the 2000 Census, Chicago is now one of the top three centers of Puerto Rican population in this country, and as immigration patterns changed, the city sprouted a new sandwich—the Jibarito (hee-bah-REE-toh)—found in the tightly knit Puerto Rican community of Humboldt Park.

Drive along Paseo Boricua, a mile long stretch of the Division Street corridor anchored by 59 foot, 40 ton steel sculptures of the Puerto Rican flag, and you’ll pass several places advertising “La Casa Del Jibarito.” But it is Borinquen Restaurant owner Juan C. Figueroa (known as Peter) who can take credit for the success of the sandwich and vice versa, since he chalks up his recent expansion to spiraling Jibarito sales. Zweiben, who worked in Miami during that Nuevo Latino wave and knows his way around a Cubano, explained exactly how this sandwich was made.

The innovative “bread” is made from twice fried green plantains (sliced and pressed into a rough rectangular shape and brushed with garlic and oil) while the fillings rely on traditional cooking methods. (For example, the pork is slow cooked, similar to Cuban style; the chicken is fried, then pulled from the bones and chopped, skin and all.)

The Jibarito is an unusual reversal of the typical sandwich texture: creamy (via the “plantain” bread) on the outside and chewy on the inside. It is also an odd blend of old and new—the Latin heritage diluted by a layering of pedestrian American sandwich ingredients (iceberg lettuce, unripe tomatoes, American cheese, mayonnaise). Judging from the crowded tables, the sandwich is extremely popular; it is also extremely regionalized. But maybe not for long—because that’s how immigrant culture spreads in this country, sandwich by sandwich.