Sandwiches, soups, salads, ravioli.
These are the four categories some people theorize every food can fall under. Today I’ll be talking about sandwiches.
After some deep research and long consideration, I think these are my favorite category of food. According to some theorists, things like pizza and lasagna count as sandwiches. For this list I won’t be including those. I’ll only be talking about things that I consider to be sandwiches.
Reuben
Let’s start with the worst sandwich ever created. At the absolute bottom of the list are Reubens. These are the worst things to ever be created. The Swiss cheese is good, corned beef is fine, I guess. Sauerkraut is quite possibly the most disgusting food on the planet. And combined with Thousand Island dressing … VOMIT CITY. Rye bread is okay, but I’d much rather have wheat or white bread.
Even just the smell of this sandwich from across the room makes me so nauseous. Cabbage is already kind of gross, then to soak it in fermented lactic acid bacteria – a sin against nature. My mom and brother love Reubens, and my mom used to make them pretty frequently in many variations including the horrid Reuben casserole. Please, please, please, if you care about me, do not ever bring a Reuben sandwich around me.
Club
I have had very few club sandwiches, hence why it is so low on the list. I am almost never inclined to order a club sandwich when I go out to eat. There are always things on the menu that sound tastier.
I ordered a club sandwich at a beach club in Italy this summer. Maybe it was just the Italy air and the beautiful Mediterranean Sea in front of me, but that was a damn good sandwich. Usually, I do not like hard boiled eggs, but the inclusion of egg on this sandwich elevated it. The bacon, turkey, lettuce and tomato were perfect. The bread was crunchy but not too hard and the accompanying fries were so yummy.
ICe Cream
I love a good ice cream sandwich. The typical sandwich with the two brown wafers and vanilla ice cream is a classic, delicious dessert. But what I love even more is when you take chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven and put them on either side of a slab of vanilla ice cream. Then you roll the sandwich in chocolate chips, so the outside of the ice cream is completely covered.
While this is a great sandwich, it isn’t something you can have anytime of day without incurring odd looks. It is a great dessert but not a full meal.
Subs
Not all subs are created equally. Some are better than others in craft, taste, composition, etc. Meatball subs are good. They aren’t great but they’re good enough. Subs from sub platters are always hit or miss. They usually have too much shredded lettuce for my liking and typically have a lukewarm temperature about them that hinders the enjoyment. Chicken finger subs are pretty good but then sometimes I realize I’m eating chicken and get grossed out.
The best subs ever are made by my dad. These subs contain the best cold cuts in our town, the crunchiest fresh Italian bread, and oil and oregano. My dad makes these sandwiches custom for everyone in our family. My sandwich always has Fontanella cheese, capicola, salami, and ham. Simple sandwich, but delicious payoff. The only reason this sandwich is not at the top of this list is because I can’t make it myself, and we only have these subs during a certain time of year, once a week on Sundays during football season. So even though these might be the best sandwiches ever, because they’re existence is so specific, I can’t put them too high on the list.
Breakfast
Rarely do I eat breakfast, but when I do, 90% of the time, I’ll be eating a breakfast sandwich. Bagels, croissants, English muffins, hard roll, donuts, biscuits, even regular toast – just the outsides of the sandwich are so versatile. The inside has 1,000 combinations as well. Scrambled eggs, over easy, egg whites, bacon, sausage, ham, American cheese, provolone, hashbrowns.
I could eat a different breakfast sandwich every day and never get sick of them. They are also super easy to make at home. I like making them when I am home alone.
Grilled Cheese
A GOD TIER SANDWICH. I love cheese and I love bread so of course they would be good together. This is such an easy sandwich to make, and you can make it in a bunch of different ways. Throw some bread in the toaster, on a pan, or on the griddle, slather some butter on there and choose your favorite type of cheese. There is never a time I couldn’t go for a grilled cheese.
During COVID, I would sit up in my room all day doing homework. My mom would bring me grilled cheese every day around lunch time with apple slices and baby carrots. It was a very sweet gesture and it made me love the sandwich even more.
Cheeseburger
This is the only “sandwich” on the list that I feel a bit weird calling a sandwich, but I think it counts. I love burgers. There are good and bad burgers and I remember every good burger I have ever had.
There is a restaurant in Rochester called Jine’s that I have deemed as having the best restaurant burger ever. I measure every burger I eat against this one. There have been a few burgers that beat it, but those burgers are usually in other cities I can’t easily get to.
The only burgers that will always beat Jine’s are the burgers my dad makes on the grill at home. I don’t know what he does with them, maybe adds a secret ingredient, but they are so good. Everything is better homemade.
Peanut Butter and Jelly
The number one sandwich was very hard to place. Cheeseburger almost took it, but I have to give the top spot to peanut butter and jelly. You might be thinking, a PB&J is the most basic sandwich with so few ingredients. BUT THAT’S WHAT’S SO GOOD ABOUT IT. It is so simple and easy and always hits the spot. This sandwich also got a higher ranking because of the nostalgia it brings to me personally.
Almost every day from kindergarten to third grade, I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch. My parents would make sandwiches for my lunch and nine times out of ten, it was a PB&J. The sandwiches were always made with love and extra peanut butter, the way I like it.
I could have this for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert and every snack in between. It is such a staple sandwich and I find myself craving one pretty often.