The Best Ingredients in America's Best Sandwiches
By Sharyn Jackson, CNTraveler.com
Whether you call it a hero, a hoagie, a po’boy or a sub, sandwiches are a lunch staple throughout the country. But it’s not just their vocabulary that varies greatly from region to region: their ingredients are inspired by local products and palate peculiarities. Here are 13 sammie-centric ingredients worth a pit stop.
FRIED PLANTAINS
Chicago
Still sticking to the Atkin’s diet? Carb-phobes can skip the bread and hold their sandwich with this slightly sweet Puerto Rican delicacy. On the jibarito, the kitchen at Chicago’s Borinquen Restaurant stuffs a twice-fried disk of plantains with sliced steak or roasted pork, onions, tomato, and lettuce.
Photo Courtesy Borinquen Restaurant
LOX
New York
Smoked salmon may have originated in Scandinavia, but nowhere does it find more love than New York. Technically, lox is a salty brined salmon, but the term has come to be a catchall phrase for a variety of cured and smoked versions of the fish—the most common of which is nova. And any corner deli worth its salt bagel will have it on the menu in some form, but Russ & Daughters is probably the most famous “appetizing” shop in New York City. The “Classic” consists of a dense everything bagel loaded with Norwegian smoked salmon, a schmear of cream cheese of your choice, and the works: tomatoes, onions, and capers.
Photo Courtesy Russ & Daughters
WHIZ
Philadelphia
Ask a group of Philadelphians where to get the best cheesesteak and you’ll be lucky if you get anything close to a consensus. Everyone’s got their own spot, and their own favorite combination of meat (steak, roast pork), cheese (provolone, American, etc.) and veggies (with or without). Pat’s King of Steaks has the distinction of being the original, and they’ve got the lexicon down to a science: order “with” (pronounced “wit”) for onions, and “Whiz” for the goopy orange cheese topping that many locals prefer.
Photo The Washington Post/Getty Images
WECK
Buffalo, New York
This soft round roll, usually topped with a crust of crystalline salt and caraway seeds, has its origins in Germany, where it is known as a “kummelweck.” It is the roll, not the sliced roast beef and horseradish inside it, that is the star ingredient in Beef on Weck, a sandwich native to the Buffalo area. At Charlie the Butcher, Beef on Weck comes in a red and white paper basket, the better to collect the jus dripping from the roll.
Photo Courtesy Charlie the Butcher
See More: America’s Best Sandwiches
HUCKLEBERRY JAM
Montana
Huckleberry isn’t just a character from literature—it’s a real berry! And the Rocky Mountains is where you’ll find them. In Montana, the sweet tart berries are used in everything from ice cream to pancakes, and lend their name to the delightful sounding dessert, huckleberry buckle. At the luxe Triple Creek Ranch in Montana’s Bitterroot Mountains, sous chef Nick Kormanik’s gourmet menu has a retro-comforting counterpoint in a peanut butter and huckleberry jam sandwich.
Photo Courtesy Triple Creek Ranch
MORNAY SAUCE
Louisville
It may sound fancy and French, but on a Hot Brown, Mornay sauce is basically homemade Cheez Whiz. The Hot Brown originated at Louisville’s Brown Hotelin the 1920s, and is an open-faced turkey and bacon sandwich, smothered in the gooey orange sauce and baked. Further West in Springfield, Illinois, the cheese sauce is employed on the Horsehoe sandwich. Here, the sauce is modified to include enhancements like beer and mustard, the turkey is swapped for a hamburger patty, and in between the meat and the cheese is a layer of fries. If that’s too much for your arteries, order a half-portion, also known as a Ponyshoe. At Springfield’s D’Arcy’s Pint, the meat is customizable.
Photo Courtesy Brown Hotel
PIMENTO CHEESE
Tennessee
This thick and creamy spread—a mixture of cheese and chopped pimento peppers—is a Southern staple, and can be served as a cracker topping, in a grilled cheese, or slathered on hamburgers. At Blackberry Farm in the Great Smokey Mountains of Tennessee, the spread is made with aged cheddar or a homemade sheep’s cheese, then mixed with mayo, mustard, salt, pepper, and pickle brine for a tangy bite. Their recommendation: serve on white bread with bread and butter pickles.
Photo Courtesy Blackberry Farm
GREEN CHILE
Santa Fe
More chile peppers grow in New Mexico than in all other states combined, so it’s no wonder that they are the signature ingredient on almost every New Mexican menu. The sauces derived from both the red and green varieties are a tasty topping for almost anything, but the addition to cheeseburgers of a sauce made of minced green chiles is considered such a staple, the state has even devised a green chile cheeseburger trail. Bert’s Burger Bowl in Santa Fe has been doling them out for more almost 60 years.
Photo Courtesy New Mexico Tourism
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DUTCH CRUNCH
San Francisco
Everyone thinks of sourdough as San Francisco’s official bread, but once you look past the Fisherman’s Wharf bread-bowl traps, Frisco sandwich shops have a much more unusual roll in stock: Dutch Crunch. Before baking, the dough is topped with a rice paste that hardens and crackles in the oven. The result, a crispy sweet crust coating a soft and chewy center, is hard to find outside the Bay Area. In the Castro, Ike’s Place is renowned for their Dutch Crunch bread, and their wacky combinations of fillings, like the Kyrptonite (roast beef, corned beef, pastrami, salami, turkey, bacon, ham, mozzarella sticks, stuffed jalapeño poppers, beer battered onion rings, avocado, pesto, pepper jack).
Photo Courtesy Jonas Tamano
TAYLOR HAM
New Jersey
Technically it’s called pork roll, and it’s kind of like fried bologna, but New Jerseyans know it by one name and one name only—Taylor Ham. The name comes from a Trenton-based brand that’s been around since the 1850s. The sliced, Spam-like meat is usually warmed up on the griddled and served on a bagel or soft roll with ketchup, salt, and pepper. Depending on your mood, add a fried egg and/or sliced American cheese. It’s classic diner food, found at any of New Jersey’s zillions of diners, including the retro Tops in East Newark.
Photo Courtesy Danielle Berman
OLIVE SALAD
New Orleans
While New Orleans is best known for its Creole cuisine, the Italian Muffuletta sandwich is as distinctly New Orleans as jambalaya. The sub consists of sliced cold cuts and cheese, but it’s a tangy olive salad that separates the Mufuletta from your usual Italian hoagie. It’s made of chopped olives, pickled veggies, garlic and olive oil, and rose to prominence at the sandwich counter at Central Grocery.
Photo Courtesy Rachelle Bowden
FRY BREAD
Arizona
Not all tacos are served on salty corn chips. On Native American land in the Southwest, fry bread is a ubiquitous snack—delicious, hot, chewy, deep-fried dough made to order. And at the James Beard Award-winning Fry Bread House in Phoenix, fry bread serves as the base for the usual taco fixins, a creation known in this part of the country Navajo Tacos.
Photo Courtesy Far Out City
BREADED PORK TENDERLOIN
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Known as a BPT, this breaded pork tenderloin sandwich is found at lunch counters throughout Iowa and Indiana. And it usually goes something like this: soft hamburger bun, onion, pickles and mustard (if you’re in Iowa) or lettuce, tomato, and mayo (if you’re in Indiana). The one part that everyone can agree on is the giant, crispy disk of fried meat, pounded out so thin that it’s stretched to about four times the size of the roll. At Joensy’s in Cedar Rapids, get a side of waffle fries to go with this Midwestern spin on schnitzel.
Photo courtesy Allen Bukoff
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