My Hometown Cuban
Growing up in Tampa, I learned through osmosis that Cuban sandwiches are, in a way, like afternoon thunderstorms—commonplace and also a vital means of renewal. Then I moved away and discovered that Cuban sandwiches elsewhere (I’m looking at you, Miami) don’t abide by Tampa tradition. Let the recipe show, a proper Tampa Cuban arrives on bread hand rolled in a local bakery, scored with palmetto fronds, and layered with sweet ham, slow-roasted pork, and that third meat so elusive to Miamians, spicy Genoa salami. It’s then hot pressed with funky Swiss, pickle chips, and a mustard-mayo combo. Whenever I return to Tampa, I stop at La Segunda Bakery in Ybor City and beeline to Centennial Park, brown bag in hand. One bite as the wild roosters strut about, and I know I’m home. —Jamie Allen
The Brilliance of Pimento Cheese
You are as orange as sunset. I delight in your mayo and cheesy goodness on the best biscuit or finest bread, topped with a thin sliver of sweet white or pickled onion. After decades, you remain the queen of sandwiches. You remind me of girlhood summers and Cousin Trish’s sweet sixteen garden party. Cheddar cheese grated by hand. Only Duke’s mayo. A dollop of horseradish for kick. Cream cheese. Never that sickly sweet concoction sold in grocery stores. Not blended to mush. Bits of pimento pepper and tiny hunks of cheese peeking through the spread. Trim the crusts if you are trying to be fancy. Truth is you don’t even need bread. Spoon it over Grippo’s Potato Chips—nacho style! —Crystal Wilkinson, author of the culinary memoir Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts
Crunch Power
We’ve all been there. You order a sandwich. It comes with potato chips, and you wish you’d upcharged to fries. But stick those chips on the sandwich? Now it’s a party! When Shuai started out as a line cook, putting chips on his sandwiches was a staff meal necessity. No time to sit and enjoy them on the side. Nowadays, we do it because we’re addicted. At home, we keep our sandwiches simple: fluffy bread, whatever protein we have on hand, acidic pickles, veggies, lots of Duke’s, and a handful of chips. The one stipulation? Gotta be kettle (usually Cape Cod or Miss Vickie’s Spicy Dill Pickle). That extra-crunchy salty bite brings it all together. —Corrie and Shuai Wang, co-owners of Jackrabbit Filly and King BBQ in North Charleston, South Carolina
A Fast Friend
I worked at a Schlotzsky’s in Athens in my fifth year of college at UGA. That means I ate a hundred of its sandwiches before I unwrapped my first New Orleans muffuletta, the sandwich that inspired Schlotzsky’s founders Don and Dolores Dissman to open a restaurant with a funny name on the south side of Austin, Texas, in 1971. By the early 1980s, their shop had spawned more than a hundred locations. I still make pit stops for the Original, which hews closest to the Dissman recipe: stacks of lunch meat on rounds of house-baked sourdough, troweled with marinated black olives and yellow mustard, topped with melted cheese. It’s the fast-food love child of New Orleans and Austin. —John T. Edge
Tomato Temptation
I saw you from afar every summer as a kid—the hot-weather treat my mom ate hunched over the kitchen sink like a thief, gobbling you up as soon as you were stacked. My immature taste hadn’t come around to tomatoes then. As with all the good grown-up things, I had to wait until I was ready. It happened in middle school. I rose from the couch, moved to the kitchen, and painted an index finger’s worth of mayo on two slices of Sunbeam Queen. I cut a gateway tomato sliver and let my ancestors guide my hand as I smothered its red in a shower of white salt and powdery black pepper. I had my way with four of you that afternoon, slicing the fruit thicker each time, and with every pink, creamy drip down my arm, inching closer to the cradle of my mom’s kitchen sink. That’s where I found you. That’s where we belong. —Vivian Howard, chef and cookbook author
Find more in G&G’s Ultimate Guide to Southern Sandwiches here.
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