When I was 14 i flew to california to visit my grandmothers place in sacremento. Down the street there was an ice cream shop/diner called Vic’s my grandmother would take me there every few days and I’d get their reuben. I don’t know what it was specifically about that reuben but I still think about it.
It was pretty heavy on the swiss cheese and there was a significant amount of beef. The saltiness from the cheese and beef mixed with the sour and slightly sweet of the thousand island and sauerkraut so perfectly and I had a chocolate milkshake and some ruffles too. The sandwich had been pressed and pan fried in butter too so it had a really nice crisp to it
I gotta get the good sourdough from the bakery down the street and I have to get there before they slice them all so I can get an unsliced load and slice it myself, extra thick. This bread retains heat without burning like no other, so I throw the thick slices in my extrawide toaster and gather the other fixings.
On each slice, a mix of Kewpie mayonnaise (good for ages 0-99, IYKYK) and mustard. Now, at any given time I have five different styles of mustard ready to use, but for preference, to give Hamela her due, I go with the Kosciuszko beer mustard, which is readily available at the Polish deli a block from the bakery, where I also get:
Black Forest Ham! Sliced as thin as the surly teens at the deli can manage. Now, you may think this is a ham sandwich, but we want to use the most flavorful, fragrant, savory ham exactly because we’re only going to use enough to impart delicious hammy flavor, and for that, thin slicing and bunching it when we put it on the sandwich is key. I’m talking maximum surface area, babies.
Atop the ham, cucumber pickles. I prefer dill over bread-n-butter. Then a one-year-aged white cheddar, cut thin with a, I don’t know what you call it, but I call it the “cheese peeler”.
Finally, the star of the show, fresh greens. The urban farm halfway between my house and the deli & bakery are always bagging up all the edible greens they gather from the edge of their growing areas and it’s heavy on the mustard greens, making it a good complement to the ham and aged cheddar. I put enough greens on to double the height of the sandwich, then smash it down with the second slice of bread.
Warm bread on the outside, savory ham and cheese, a little bite from the mustard and pickles, and the crisp greens… it’s perfect.
I make my own unforgettable sandwich. It goes like this: homemade wholemeal bread with seeds, homemade butter, lettuce, ham, skinless tomatoes, hardboiled egg, mayo, spring onion or radish or dilled(fermented) cucumber.
Baguette from our local bakery in Schinnen, they do the original French method, with tick sliced tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, home made mayo (whisked, no stickblender stuff), salt and pepper. Delicious.
A local Italian place has a hot turkey sub with Swiss & banana peppers that comes with a side of fries. It has fresh tomatoes & lettuce and is soaked in extra virgin olive oil. It’s so fuckin’ good.