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Dunkin' Donuts has been tempting me lately with its ads for its Waffle Breakfast Sandwich. I dispute its claim that it represents a "homemade" taste. Maybe it's just my home, but it's never occurred to me to use waffles as bread before. Granted, I used to eat waffle tacos in college, but that's different.
Waffle Tacos recipe: Toast two waffles, apply a moderate amount of maple syrup to their centers, then fold in half, taco-style, and enjoy, preferably with white wine for maximum alliteration.
This waffle sandwich is something else. It's not my first encounter with such a thing; I've eaten a similar breakfast sandwich once at Le Peep I believe. But that was on a whim.
Now I'm faced with this thing every morning at my hungriest hour (from 8 to 9 a.m.) and my will is weakening. Expect a review soon.
I awoke this morning to some unsettling news from The Freakin' Deacon of The Church of What's Happening Now. The Sandwich of Knowledge has arrived.
Its appearance indicates that the sandwipocolypse is nigh. This beastly pile of protein counts for at least two of the requisite four horsemen.
According to This is why you're fat, TSoK is built as such: "The bottom tier contains eight strips of bacon, six sausages and four burger paddies; followed by a second tier of black pudding; topped by a third tier comprised of two diced chicken breasts and six fried eggs."
It took me several readings to understand the entirety of this creation. The gospel comes from one known simply as "Luke." I'll attempt to walk you through it.
Bottom tier: Bacon (eight strips), sausage (six links) and burger patties (four).
That's the equivalent of two double bacon hamburgers and one hearty breakfast. In other words, three square meals, all at once. In one layer! Madness. Not even any regard for traditional meal boundaries; breakfast, lunch and dinner are all mashed into a single sandwich tier. Moving on.
Middle tier: Black pudding (one thick blob).
Never having had black pudding, I'm not all that qualified to talk about it. I do know that it's among the more sinister breakfast puddings, and that it's a key component of the "full breakfast" eaten in the UK. Wikipedia says: "Black pudding or (less often) blood pudding is an English term for sausage made by cooking blood with a filler until it is thick enough to congeal when cooled." Wow.
Top tier: Chicken breast (two) and fried eggs (six).
About two breakfasts and a dinner here. I'd say something about how gratuitous this tier is, but I'm still too distraught by the middle tier to think about it.
Bread: About one loaf. There appear to be some tomatoes inextricably strewn about the base as well.
Tomatoes?
If the Dagwood Sandwich is TNT, The Sandwich of Knowledge is the Atom Bomb. Kent has taken a dangerous, but manageable, creation and blown it way out of proportion to an earthcrushing place we can't come back from. Should someone dare eat TSoK, he or she would gain Complete World Knowledge and become either The Beast or John Hodgman (maybe both?).
Even so, I'm proud of Luke who whoever created this thing. Yes, it means our imminent demise, but it also shows the spirit of excess is alive and well not only in the U.S., but in lands as exotic as England or possibly Ireland. For all my hyperbole, I honestly support this endeavor. There are worst ways to go out than by a sandwich.
I said I'd explore more breakfast-as-lunch options and I did not lie.
I've found a better option for Bacon and Egg Salad Sandwiches in the Kew Gardens area thanks to the ever-wise Bryan, who ordered an egg salad sandwich with bacon from our office's friends next door last week. Although not perfect, Friends offers several advantages over Redwood's comparable mega club sandwich. Such as ...
1. Humility. Redwood is all pomp and circumstance with its giant dish, quartered wedges, coleslaw in the middle, etc. Friends' version is wrapped in paper and foil and tossed in a paper sack. Simple, effective.
2. Price. $3.80 for the egg salad on a roll plus $1.50 for bacon. Admittedly, this is too much money just to add bacon, but all together, it's still cheaper than what you get across the street.
3. No portion ambiguity. This one's abstract but important, so allow me to explain. Friends gives you what is clearly one meal's worth of food. Redwood gives you about 1.4 meals. Two wedges aren't quite enough. Three would be about right, but that leaves you with a fourth wedge, which is definitely too much. You must choose the lesser of two bad choices at Redwood: split the sandwich in half and have two not-quite-enough meals. Or, power through, and eat $7 worth of egg salad sandwich.
So it's established -- Friends is the place to go for a breakfasty sandy. When Queens Blvd. thaws, I expect I'll venture out to distant delis in search of new lunch choices. Rumor has it that there's a Friends II, or maybe it's called Friends III, down the road. I don't think they're connected to the more familiar Friend's next door, but it might be worth a vist once temperatures climb above freezing. Until then, I'll be eating my Bacon and Eggs and Grilled Cheese and Tomatoes from next door when I fail to bring leftovers.
I'm not normally a fan of the club sandwich, but I couldn't resist today. I walked into Redwood Deli knowing I wanted two things: egg salad and bacon. It's as if I were pregnant and egg salad and bacon were pickles and ice cream.
I had a feeling Redwood might have something along those lines, since they have about 20 menus on display. They added another one recently — the "stimulus" breakfast menu, featuring pancakes and something containing acai berries. Eventually I found what I believe was called the Bacon and Egg Salad club, and of course ordered it.
Despite being tainted with hateful amounts of filler lettuce, I enjoyed Redwood's bacon-egg sandwich thing with pickles. The bread was toasted and the egg salad was plentiful. It occurred to me that an egg salad sandwich with bacon and toast is essentially breakfast for lunch. While I refuse to eat lunch or dinner for breakfast (see reheated pizza), I wholeheartedly support breakfast meals for all-hour consumption.
What Redwood's done here is lunchize a bacon, eggs and toast breakfast, and I salute them. If they invent a lunchy sandwich involving pancakes and bacon, hugs are in order.
Will I continue to pay $8 for four wedges of bacon and egg goodness centered by coleslaw? No. Will I seek a way to pay far less for a way to eat eggs and bacon together for lunch for cheap? Yes. Stay tuned.
For someone who considers himself a huge fan of both sandwiches and Vietnamese food, I've been slacking on the bánh mì front. The bánh mì is the definitive Vietnamese sandwich and its popularity soared in 2008 judging by the number of times I read about it in food geek blogs and articles.
Well I tried it and I liked it. In San Diego, a local expert took me to Hamilton's Tavern, where they dish up the "Banh From The Pubs" sandwich. My understanding of the bánh mì is that it must be made of a baguette stuffed with Vietnamese ingredients. By this possibly inaccurate definition, Hamilton's sandy probably meets the standard. As the menu says, it was a (sic) "lovingly crafted version of a Vietnamese Banh Mi. it's tasty, its cute, its healthy, its a mix of CUCUMBERS, CARROT AND DAIKON SLAW, RED ONION, FRESH BASIL, CILANTRO, daveys PCS SAUCE and oh yeah ITS VEGAN!!!!!! With PUB CHIPS whooo!"
Excessive excitement aside, the sandy tasted good. It was like I took a Vietnamese noodle bowl and stuffed as much of it as would fit inside of a halved baguette, which is a good thing. Now the challenge is to find the real deal in NY. My esteemed colleague and Vietnamese connoisseur Kim has gone to great lengths to find quality pho in this big city; will the A+ bánh mì be as hard to find? Does anyone understand why New York City's Thai and Vietnamese offerings lag behind those of Denver? Next up I'll check out Banh Mi Saigon Bakery at 138 Mott St. thanks to a tip on SeriousEats by user Dragonguy.
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I'm finding that weather affects my sandwich choices more than any other factor.
How else to explain my having eaten the majority of my lunches at the diner next door for the last month? Rather than bundling up for the long trek across the street, I've instead opted for the grilled cheese or BLT at Friends at nearly every opportunity. My thought process is this: I am cold. Where is the closest place to get warm food? The vending machine? No. Friends? Yes, sold.
Being scarfless, that changed today. Somewhere amid the weekend's holiday shop-a-thon, my scarf disappeared. Too much putting it on and taking it off transitioning from chilly streets to crowded hell-box stores, it seems. So, when it came time for lunch, I agreed to make the trek to Subway since the sidewalk-based low quality goods dealer was on the way. I think of him like if Walmart was just one guy with a table's worth of merchandise. His wears span all manner of assorted Chinese-exported what-have-you.
The sidequest proved to be a mistake; the man only had one scarf for sale and despite Justin's pro-scarf sales pitch, I wasn't convinced I wanted it.
Scarfless and cold, I made it to Subway, where I got their Seafood Sensation 6". My compatriots viewed the mixture of fake crab and mayo with fear and disgust, which I wasn't expecting. Is imitation crab, or krab, really so bad? I suppose it's not for mayo-haters, being that it's essentially fish and mayo, packed into flakes and dressed with more mayo. But I still trust it more than Subway's vaguely named veggie patties. Those don't even look like food.
With olives, banana peppers, tomatoes, and salt and pepper, my Seafood Sensation on wheat was decent. Not satisfying or all that tasty, but acceptable. It certainly wasn't worthy of its hyperbolic name. Miley Cyrus and The Jonas Brothers are sensations. This was merely a sub-par sandwich.
Dunkin' Donuts has been tempting me lately with its ads for its Waffle Breakfast Sandwich. I dispute its claim that it represents a "homemade" taste. Maybe it's just my home, but it's never occurred to me to use waffles as bread before. Granted, I used to eat waffle tacos in college, but that's different.
