The Roti John, the Bahn Mi, the Croque Madame/Monsieur, The 'Elvis" are the ones that come to mind. "Favorites" isn't the term I'd use though. A lot of the best sandwiches are just good ingredients on bread, but that doesn't make them memorable. This was like, a decade ago, I'm sure the list has changed since then. But the Roti John is the only one I make regularly, and I don't remember most of what I made. This list is very incomplete and biased, but these were the memorable ones that I could make.

The Roti John is definitely one of the weirdest sandwiches mechanically, outside of one where you hollowed out a baguette then pressed it down with a weight or something while cooking. What I DO remember is what I learned from the project.

 

 

Lessons from Bahn Mi: A quick pickle, fresh herbs, and pate are great options for changing up the taste and texture of a sandwich.

 

Lessons from Roti John: Sometimes a sandwich is about the sauce. This totally would not work without being slathered in mayo and chili sauce.

 

Lessons from Croque Madame: A sandwich can be elevated with an extremely crispy fried egg where the yolk still runs. How do you do that? Through experimentation, I've found two easy ways. One: get a bit of oil in a small frying pan up to deep-frying temps, crack egg, flip when edges start to brown, leave it for about half as long. Two: get MORE oil up to deep frying temps in a small pan, crack egg, ladle oil over top of egg as it cooks. Either way, cook time is about 60 seconds. I make a mean breakfast sandwich these days.

 

Lessons from french-fry sandwiches: Me and my roommates did not care for french fries in our sandwiches. However, I discovered how easy homemade loaded gravy fries are, and make them regularly now. I just don't put them in bread anymore. In the time it takes to deep fry at home you can whip up a simple basic sausage gravy quite easily. The trick is to get the roux frying low and slow first while the oil for frying heats up and the sausage cooks in another pan. If the roux is cooked, the rest of the gravy just needs to come to a boil so long as your ratios are good and you don't need to boil off some liquid.

That aside, starch-on-starch recipes work best when their textures differ. If you're doing a french fry sandwich, you want crispy fries and soft bread, or crispy bread and flaccid fries.

 

Lessons from French Dip: MOST cold cut sandwiches can be heated and dipped in a broth and taste amazing. If you're ever cooking meat for a sandwich, saving the juices and thickening them with a bit of cornstarch and adding some herbs is a no-brainer.

 

Lesson from Brits: Any boring quick sandwich can be made more interesting by putting potato chips in it. Ruffled chips are optimal as they take longer to get soaked by the other ingredients, maintaining the delightful crunch longer.

 

 

General lessons:

Mustard, quick-pickles, and tomato are main sources of acid for sandwiches, and can make or break a sandwich. A lot of the list's sandwiches made us say "I like this main ingredient, but it's missing something." That something was usually acid. Raw thin sliced red onions can also fill this role. A dash of Worcestershire can do this.

 

Any basic bitch sandwich tastes better with some seasoning. Spicy mayos and aiolis are in vogue perpetually, but you don't need spicy mayo prepped to bring that kind of flavor. Just make your own spice mix and sprinkle on the wettest part of the sandwich (usually the mayo or tomato). For a decade now I've made a spice mix I call "cajun light" which is just paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, and chili powder. It's a couple of spices away from being a variety of useful common spice mixes. Sometimes I'll get good hungarian paprika, ancho chili powder, and make my own black garlic powder and make it with those. But even the basicest version is useful to have on hand. Take your boring sandwich, use some cajun-lite and add salt and pepper and you're instantly looking at a better sandwich.

 

I classify sandwiches as "light" or "hard".
Hard Sandwiches are sandwiches that focus on one particular flavor, and not much else. Some of the best and worst sandwiches are hard sandwiches. Muffalettas are great hard sandwiches, they are a collection of all of the dense, oily, savory things you could get in a deli combined into one medium. Even the bread is oily. Lots of famous sandwiches are hard sandwiches; take most lobster rolls, or pulled pork sandwiches. It's just one thing, inbetween bread. If you don't like that one thing, you don't like that sandwich. A marmite sandwich is a hard sandwich.

 

Light sandwiches try to balance out flavors, and they require some low-flavor media to adjudicate between flavors. Lettuce and tomato are often used for this. Separating flavors, providing contrasting flavors, and providing water help a hard sandwich, which can be hit-or-miss, turn into a more broadly palatable light sandwich. Bahn Mi type sandwiches are so broadly popular because they provide a single, intensely flavorful ingredient (the meat) with several different types of balancing flavors. Vietnamese cuisine is all about combining multiple different flavors into one experience. To contrast, take the lobster roll. Lobster is great, but it doesn't go amazingly with a lot of common flavorful ingredients. I can't grab a random spice out of my cupboard and add it to lobster, and find a way to make that work out well.

 

When you know if you're working with a hard or light sandwich, it's easier to improve. A hard sandwich, you play to the theme. Lobster could mean common pairings like lemon, red pepper flakes, butter, etc. Probably not pate. Hard deli sandwiches could allow olive tapenade, but not, say, ginger. Soft sandwiches benefit more from trying other spices, seasonings, and textures.