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.
Former chain of vegan subs out of SoCal named Subvegan had some of the best sandwhiches I have ever tasted, vegan or otherwise. Vegan deli meat and vegan cheese quality vary, but this place had the hookup for the best of both. A 9in sub was $12, loaded so fat it barely closed and was two meals worth for any normal person.
Their italian sub, the Godfather, had (vegan) turkey, ham, salami, provalone, cheddar, pepperoncini peppers, tomato, arugula, olives, onions, mayo, and italian dressing. The bread was always the perfect ratio of crunch to fluffy, their sauce portion was always on point, and their veggies were fresh as fuck. I salivate even just typing it out.
My fiancee and I would order in advance to have a sub waiting for us whenever we visited her family in Anaheim. It was the best. We started making plans in June to move out there so she could live near her parents and they closed their doors in July. Good vegan subs are a rarity, let alone vegan subs that stand out in quality against their non-veg counterparts. I am still in mourning.
I always hit the one in Garden Grove, it was in a mini vegan plaza. Still a Loving Hut and a vegan pizza place in the same plaza. Never got a chance to go to the Santa Anna one.
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.
it’s a reuben; but that name is licensed so they call it a russian sandwich.
it’s near the museum of modern history in manhattan.
the corned beef is chunked out into thin-ish shards instead of sliced like all of the other reubens.
the saurkraut is homemade; thick; crunchy; and tart af and the rye is also homemade and super tangy. i suspect that they make the saurkraut the same way they make mexican style pickled jalapenos/carrots/onions/etc.
they also make their own dressing and it’s got a fantastic kick to it entirely due to the fact that the entire staff is mexican; no one speaks english and none of the patrons are wasp americans. (you’re not welcome if you can only speak english).
i haven’t had that sandwich since 2009 and i still crave and fantasize about it each time i want a delicious sandwich so good that it makes you lick your hands clean after you eat it.
i’ve stopped eating reubens because they pale so badly in comparison that it makes me angry to be reminded that i paid for such a THOROUGHLY mediocre alternative.
Why can’t the U.S. buy decent sauerkraut at the store? Why must we make it ourselves or get awful kraut? Germany has a unique and delightful kraut for seemingly every town and village, but the U.S. has exactly one type from a handful of companies that all make it the same. Well, maybe two types if you count ‘canned’ but I don’t reckon that to be actual sauerkraut. What was the topic? Sandwiches? Well, if I could find a good kraut, I would spend my days trying to recreate a reuben-like masterpiece.
I know I sound like a corporate shill, but check out Cleveland Kitchen brand sauerkraut. It’s not as good as homemade, but it’s worlds better than that nuclear waste found in the questionable meat aisle of the grocery store or the cans.
Is it any good? I used to like Lidl and Aldi breads before COVID, when you could slice it right there. They stopped that, and so I no longer had a reason to drive 5-10 miles out of my way to go there. I’d go back for a good sauerkraut, though.
I didn’t know there was a museum of modern history in Manhattan, it sounds like a place I’d like to visit. Can you drop a link to its website? Unless you mean the museum of natural history? Or the museum of modern art?
intentionally obfuscated to protect the proprietor; wasps REALLY suck and they’re a majority; especially in manhattan or on the lemmyverse or anywhere else for that matter.
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.
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.