R2L is serving up some of the city’s most inspired and delicious sandwiches from their perch high above the city in Liberty Two – a location that happens to overlook South Philadelphia.  The symbolism is not lost on the menu, as Chef/Owner Daniel Stern has created food that “walks the fine line between traditional and modern, where the old school things that people grew up on also grow up.”  Old school sandwiches like cheese-steaks, burgers, lobster rolls and the Reuben are transformed by Stern into unbelievably decadent, yet unpretentious finger-foods.

We started with cocktail Reubens.  Stern had to get this one perfect, as he is a believer that there ”probably hasn’t been a better sandwich invented.” House-brined corned beef, fresh-made sauerkraut, Gruyere cheese and a stone ground mustard are wrapped in a pocket of homemade rye dough, grilled and baked.  The crunchy, tangy and savory delight is served on a plate dressed with celery-root ketchup based thousand island dressing and stone ground Dijon. “Eat it with your hands” – the Chef insists.  Our complaint was that we didn’t have 700 of these little treasures lined up to knock down.

The venison cheesesteaks draw inspirations both from South Philly and Stern’s days as executive chef of Le Bec Fin.  The cheesesteak has grown into a seriously sophisticated sandwich here, as venison loin, sauteed wild-mushrooms and carmelized onions with a reduced venison jus is served inside an Amoroso roll, cut bite-sized to force you to savor the richness of this masterpiece.  The Amoroso roll and Fontina fondue “whiz” that the morsels rest upon both ground us in this dish’s roots, while the old-world preparation of the venison brings the flavors sky-high.

The lobster roll, inspired by the chef’s visits to the coast, is lip-curlingly delicious and has us inventing adjectives. Tail, claw and knuckle-meat is dressed with a smooth and light, yet rich home-made lavender mayonnaise. The finely diced blanched celery balances well texturally with the hunks of lobster, and the home-made potato roll brings a very homey property to the sweet and savory sandwich.

The Chef has imparted his decadent signature on the classic cheeseburger, and to do so spent weeks experimenting to get his meat proportions perfect.  We love when a chef aims for “optimal fat and flavor content” when selecting what to grind – and this burger, with aged cheddar and smokey bacon, can’t help but make you giggle like a school girl.  Both the mind and taste buds are absolutely tickled by the unsweetened donut that it’s served on, as well as by the fermented mushroom-ketchup that the chef created after “researching the various forgotten ketchups that stopped being made when people started relying on the grocery store for their condiments.”  This burger is legit.  To paraphrase MC Hammer, this burger is R2L2Q.

R2L is open from Monday through Wednesday 5pm to 1am and until 1:30 Thursday through Saturday, serving food until 10 and 11 respectively, and offers a full menu fit for the exclusive and inviting cocktail-party ambiance that the decor and highrise view suggests.   While we came for the sandwiches, we wouldn’t mind spending an evening here, eating the finger food, sampling the well-crafted cocktails and moving on to the full menu.

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R2L
37th Floor of Two Liberty Place
50 S. 16th Street – Philadelphia, PA (Google Map)
(215) 564-5337

On a sunny corner of South Street that straddles Washington West and Bella Vista, seemingly miles removed from the blaring car stereos a few blocks to the east, Supper’s new lunch menu boldly re-imagines classic sandwiches with a welcoming, come as you are attitude.

Acclaimed Chef Mitch Prensky strives to create “the ultimate version” of iconic sandwiches, adding his own stamp to a Reuben, a French Dip, a Hot Dog and a Banh Mi.  Having once worked as Sous Chef for the lunch service at Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill (in addition to his classic French training and New York fine dining experience,) Chef Prensky truly loves the action at lunch and needed to get his ideas for sandwiches out onto plates.  Now available Monday through Saturday, Supper’s lunch menu has some serious sandwich action.

Supper’s version of the Reuben is served on Famous 4th Street rye bread, sliced thick and brushed with bacon fat and a mustard aoili.  Fried carnitas-style pork belly is tossed with thousand island dressing, and toasted with cooked sauerkraut under a layer of gruyere.  Chef tops the open-faced sandwich with apple chutney because pork, apple and gruyere work so well together, even when served as a reuben with a side of pastrami chips.

The Banh Mi features crispy fried Malaysian-inspired squid with bits of spicy Sichuan sausage, heaps of cilantro, lettuce and pickled peppers on a baguette that was baked fresh a few blocks away at Ba Le Bakery, paired with five spice chips.

The Supper Dog is made in house from 100% pork shoulder – “all killer, no filler” – on a house baked, buttered bun.  Wrapped in bacon and deep fried, it is served with grain mustard, BBQ onions, kraut and buttermilk fried pickles.  The Lamb French Dip, served with Herbs de Provence chips, is made from house-prepared lamb pastrami and lamb jus, is served with feta and olives on a baguette cut on a bias to help with the dipping.

The menu also features a burger borrowed from the dinner menu with horseradish cream, roasted tomatoes, caramelized onions, gruyere and a side of duck fat fingerlings. The lobster roll is served as a tried and true classic and paired with Old Bay chips.  Traditional fresh steamed lobster is mixed with lemon aioli, chopped celery, salt and pepper on a top-loaded buttered bun.

Chef Prensky is openly enthusiastic about sandwiches because in his opinion, the layers of ingredients combine to make each bite the perfect bite.  Among his local favorites are John’s Roast Pork, Sarcone’s, Jim’s Steaks, Ba Le Bakery, even a late night panini at Old Nelson.  He stresses that people should not overlook the bread when making sandwiches – you want the right type, the right thickness, and sometimes, like with their house made charcuterie, older bread can better than fresh.

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Supper
926 South Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147 (Google Map)

With the last weeks of summer approaching, we’re trying every way possible to hold back these sun filled, lazy days of relaxation. What better way to live it up, then by treating yourself to some delicious, and rich lobster rolls? The cool combination of succulent Maine lobster, celery, and lemon juice is a great way to reminisce about the road trips, beach vacations, and other fun summer activities, before it’s time to return to school and work. This recipe from the great recipe blog Smitten Kitchen is simple, and flavorful, substituting the traditional hot dog style bun for a brioche roll.

Lobster Rolls
Light Brioche Burger Buns [Smitten Kitchen]

Oyster House, formerly Sansom Street Oyster House, is a modern seafood restaurant and oyster bar.  A Mom & Pop restaurant, in contrast to the chains that dot the landscape, Oyster House offers fresh, seasonal, local ingredients for the common person.  Owner Sam Mink calls the restaurant “a return to its roots,” serving comfort East coast seafood at a moderate price.  With Executive Chef Greg Ling in the kitchen, Oyster House’s menu changes daily, offering a wide selection of seafood in a comfortable, welcoming atmosphere full of charm and history.

Sam’s grandfather (also named Sam Mink) owned and operated Kelly’s seafood restaurant, a Philadelphia institution near City Hall, from the 40s until it was sold in the 70s.  In 1976, Sam’s father, David Mink, opened Sansom Street Oyster House with a simple vision: fresh seafood at a moderate price.  In 2000, David retired and sold the restaurant outside the Mink family.  But in 2008, the new owner’s financial trouble presented an opportunity for the Minks, who reacquired the restaurant and emerged in June 2009 with Sam and David managing the newly renovated and renamed Oyster House.

The 120-seat Oyster House has a cool gray rustic-industrial look that suits today’s restaurant culture.  It features reclaimed building materials, including marble pavers from Independence Mall, timbers from the Academy of Music and pendant lights from old ships.  The only color in the restaurant comes from the late Sam Mink’s antique Victorian oyster plates that adorn the walls.  (At one point, his 500+ plate collection was the largest in the world.)  Regulars from the old days have been returning to experience the restaurant’s rebirth, plus a new generation of customers in their 30s and 40s.

At lunch time, half of all customers order sandwiches, headlined by the New England-style Lobster Roll.  At $26, the lobster roll is ripe for ridicule; that is, until people learn what actually goes into it.  One and a half lobsters are packed into each sandwich.  Delivered (live) each day, Oyster House does have a tank so you can be sure the lobster is supremely fresh.  Steamed to prevent over-saturation, the lobsters are broken down and the sweet meat is mixed with a simple dressing of mayonnaise, celery, lemon, salt and pepper.  The chilled lobster salad contrasts the toasted and buttered potato roll, giving a bite that is tender, creamy, sweet and lightly crisp.  The hot dog bun is less traditional than the New England top-loader, but according to Chef Ling, they are still tinkering and experimenting with different buns to find the very best.

The Fried Clam Roll is reminiscent of a lobster shack in Maine.  Ipswich clams, also known as soft-shell steamers, are breaded in cornmeal and fried to a golden crisp.  Served in a heaping mound on the same potato bun as the lobster roll, the sandwich is dressed with a flavorful tartar sauce that includes capers, cornichons and red onions.  The size of the sandwich is a bit overwhelming, but the salty bits of clam and tangy tartar make it worth the extra effort.

The only non-seafood item on the menu is the burger, for which Oyster House has received glowing reviews from customers.  Dry-aged prime chuck, brisket and porterhouse are cut fine with steel blades – not ground – to preserve the flavor of the meat.  Served with tangy cabrales blue cheese, sweet grilled onions and a fried oyster on a brioche bun, the 6.5 ounce burger is bursting with juice and flavor.

Sam Mink, who returned to Philadelphia after nine years in San Francisco, and spent the last few years managing Jose Garces’ Amada and Distrito, is a self-professed tough critic of sandwiches.  His favorites: a panini from DiBruno’s or a hoagie from Sarcone’s.

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Oyster House
1516 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102 (Google Map)

A rundown of America’s greatest sandwiches reminds us that we read Playboy for the articles, of course.  Their A-List identifies some of this country’s most iconic sandwiches, including the lobster roll, the pastrami sandwich, the cheesesteak, the Cuban, the banh mi and the Italian beef.  And while the debate can begin as to which shop actually makes the best version of these legendary sandwiches, we at Unbreaded just appreciate the discourse.

For some serious sandwich porn, check out the complete list at Playboy.com.

This isn’t the first time I’ve poured out my sandwich love or written about my theory that they are this country’s first fusion food. You can read some of this previously published material in Esquire and Travel + Leisure.

When I am working on a story for Travel + Leisure, it’s my job to hit a city’s culinary highlights. But I always make it a point to start with that city’s signature dish as a way of understanding local history. Iconic regional dishes can be used to reveal the roots of local immigration and determine what each ethnic group brought to the community culture.

The great chef John Besh explained to me that New Orleans is unique as a historical port because it was settled with very little Anglican influence, and that the one-pots (like gumbo) are a link to its cultural mix of Spanish and French colonists with a large enslaved Afro-Caribbean community. He told me to look at those long lists of herbs and spices: “Everyone stirred a little bit of their culture into the pot.”  Or, when I was working my way through the menu at a Zingerman’s Roadhouse in Ann Arbor Michigan (specializing in “Great American Food,” regional dishes from around the country), I learned the background of chicken fried steak. Due to the prominent role Germans and Austrians had in settling Texas, it doesn’t take much to view that dish as a frontier translation of Wiener Schnitzel (staple of Central European cuisine).

The connection is even more obvious with sandwiches. Most of the country’s great urban sandwich places are in former factory (and working) neighborhoods where immigrants quickly set up shop and folded their native ingredients (and/or cooking methods) into mainstream cuisine. As the quickest way to layer the tastes of the old country into the new, sandwiches are probably our original fusion food.

There are plenty of American regional sandwiches (with accompanying stories) like the Beef-on-Weck in Buffalo or Loosemeats in Sioux City, IA. But I decided to limit myself to tracing the outline of the country, starting in Maine and working down the coast to Miami, over to New Orleans and then across the Texas land border, up the West Coast and across the Northern boundary to Chicago.

This was not an exercise in “best:” I am not much of a food ranker. I like to think about context, and although there may not always be perfect symmetry between city and sandwich, here is my version of the United States, according to sandwiches.

From Maine to Connecticut, the lobster and clam roll
There might not be a specific ethnic link for the lobster roll (many folks like Red’s Eats, Wiscasset, Maine, a picturesque road side stand that’s been around since 1938).  But there is an “embarrassment of riches” aspect, common in many immigrant family kitchens. In the 1988 film Mystic Pizza, townie waitress Daisy (Julia Roberts), invited to the summer home of a rich WASP boyfriend (played by Adam Storke in a classic James Spader role), is less than thrilled when dinner turns out to be lobster—a staple in her family’s household because her Portuguese-American mother works in a lobster plant on the docks.

Maine was the site of the first recorded European colony in 1604 and according to the state’s Department of Marine Resources, lobster fishing is “probably the oldest, continuously operated industry on the North American continent.” Prior to commercialization, every lobster caught in Maine stayed in Maine. (Early records are scarce, but in 2000, the lobster harvest yielded 57,000,000 pounds.)  So imagine what lobster was at one time: poverty food. Indentured servants (who exchanged labor for passage to America) had it written into their contracts that they would not have to eat it more than three times a week, and a law guaranteed prisoners the same protection (cruel and unusual punishment by crustacean).

To me, a heap of lobster in a roll that requires a good grip is nothing more than a device to turn seafood into a solid meal: heavier, heartier family fare is typically achieved by adding bread (even those crunchy Trenton oyster crackers soaked in chowders qualify).

The same theory can be applied to the clam roll, a shoreline staple along the Connecticut coast. Since the Native Americans showed colonists how to harvest clams (the white shells were carved into beads and used for currency, or “wampum”), shell-fishing has been a vital part of the state’s economy. But you can’t feed your family a steady diet of clams on the half shell, which accounts for some of the heartier regional clam dishes, like New Haven’s famous clam pizza.

In Madison, Lenny and Joe’s Fish Tale serves a clam roll made with breaded whole or full-bellied clams (also known as Ipswich or steamer clams, these have a thin brittle shell which doesn’t completely close because of its protruding long neck or siphon). No pre-breading and sitting around for these clams. Instead, they are batter-dipped, rolled in cracker meal, and fried to order. Since the breading is done at the last moment, the clams remain completely coated, forming a protective crust on contact with the hot oil which produces the internal steam necessary to properly cook the clam, and in the process, creates a sandwich of delicious contrasts: crispy but tender.

A regional requirement: both of these sandwiches must be served on a toasted top-loading New England hot dog bun, which looks like a small rectangular “box” made of white bread. I imagine it was invented like this: a hungry guy in a hurry took a piece of toast and folded it in half with one hand, letting the seam rest along his palm like a trough. Then he filled it up.

Pastrami in New York
More than a decade ago, the late Abe Lebewohl, founder of the Second Avenue Deli, showed me how to hand-slice pastrami. Now this is an instinctive art. You have to be able to “feel” the pastrami because each one is different, taking into consideration how hard or soft the meat is after steaming as well as the fat content. Placing a whole brine-cured and smoked beef belly on a narrow wooden counter (where it fit perfectly into the indentation shaped by the thousands that went before it), Abe trimmed off the crisp, spicy edges, pushing them into a little mound and motioned for me to “eat, eat.” I left that day with a securely foil-wrapped packet of still warm and beautifully fatty pastrami in my purse, feeling like I was transporting an organ.

Although it is more of a global village now, the Lower East Side of Manhattan was once the epicenter of Eastern European immigration, packed with pushcarts peddlers and synagogues, and Abe, known as the Mayor of Second Avenue, was a throw back to the day when that street was lined with theaters and called the “Yiddish Broadway.” Like Ukrainian refuge Lebewohl, pastrami has deep Jewish roots (explanation better left to an expert like Joan Nathan)  even appearing as a cultural stereotype in Woody Allen’s great urban romance Annie Hall (1977), when Midwestern transplant Hall (Diane Keaton) orders a “pastrami on white bread with, uh, mayonnaise and tomatoes and lettuce,” and New Yorker Alvy Singer (Woody) looks embarrassed and then a little afraid.

I have my own procedure: Order pastrami on rye—no trimmings or toppings. When the sandwich arrives, use my thumbs to pick up the edges of the bread (as though I am shuffling cards) and then, because the fat to meat ratio is never exactly “right,” peer down at the pastrami and give a little philosophical shrug. Add mustard.

In 1996, the wonderful Abe Lebewohl was murdered while making a deposit at a local bank. I went back to the deli once after that, but it didn’t feel right. Then it closed. But recently, I read that his nephew opened a relocated Second Avenue Deli, where I have yet to go.

Philadelphia and its connection to New Orleans
Slide down the map until you get to Philadelphia, the largest fresh water port in the world and surely the sandwich capital of America. This is a city with several iconic regional specialties: cheese steak, roast pork, and the hoagie are a few.  For this purpose, I settled on using the hoagie, reportedly named for the Italian immigrants who labored in the iron and steel building naval shipyards on Hog Island (the world’s largest shipyard during WWI). The “hoggie” was a meal on the move with all the flavors of home: an assortment of cured pork meats (prosciutto, sopressata and coppa), sharp provolone cheese, and a make-shift salad of sorts (lettuce, tomatoes, onions and hot peppers, dressed with oil, vinegar and a pinch of dried oregano). The bread—typically a crunchy seeded crust with a soft but substantial interior—was merely transportation.

At this point, jump over to the port of New Orleans because one of its signature sandwiches—the muffuletta—is exactly the same as a hoagie—only different. Like two dialects of the same language, the central elements are there: a layering of meats (with the inclusion of mortadella, a pork bologna) and cheese. But while Philadelphia’s turn-of-the-century Italian settlers came from the Southern provinces of Italy, 90% of those who came thru New Orleans were from Sicily. That explains why their sandwich (“invented” in about 1906 to feed that city’s wharf workers) is on round, soft, slightly hollow Sicilian bread (or muffuletta), and the standard hoagie salad toppings are translated into an idiosyncratic pickled olive-laden vegetable medley, distantly related to the regional Sicilian specialty of caponata (a sweet and sour eggplant relish reminder that Sicily is a leading olive and caper growing area).

When I made this very same American iconic regional sandwich trip years ago, I got a warm muffuletta at the Napoleon House and a toasted Frenchuletta (on a baguette) at Luizza’s. But like most visitors, I also went to Central Grocery in Viuex Carre or French Quarter, once known locally as Little Sicily. Slightly spongy (to absorb the olive salad) and intersected by a ribbon of meat/cheese filling, this huge muffuletta is pre-cut into quarters and wrapped in old-fashioned sturdy white paper. Although the highly-hyped grocery may look like a tourist trap, don’t be put off by the discarded Barq’s root beer bottles, crumbled Zapp potato chip bags, or the long lines. The people of Central Grocery are sandwich professionals.

(There is also a link between NOLA’s shrimp/oyster po’ boy and Connecticut’s fried clam roll: both turn local seafood into heartier fare. I got my po’boy from Parkway Tavern, at the corner of Hagan and Toulouse, overlooking Bayou St. John.)

Breaded and fried shrimp (served with lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise and pickles) on distinctive New Orleans–style French bread (lightly crisp crust, interior as airy as cotton candy) from celebrated Leidenheimer Bakery.

Editor’s note: Part 2 covers the iconic sandwiches of the American South, Southwest, West Coast and Midwest.