You Say Sandwich, We Say Yeah!

Sneaking in shortly before the lunch hour rush, this here is a hot pastrami with coleslaw in Russian style dressing. Sitting on firm chewy slabs of caraway seed bread, the pastrami was melt in your mouth good and some of the finest I have ever enjoyed. With my host picking parts of the meat that fell onto the plate, which can also come just as a deli platter, she missed the best part, which was the genius combination of the creamy pickled coleslaw cutting through the pastrami with the caraway seed flavour. At a fraction of the price of its NY counterparts, and seemingly beloved by locals and visitors alike, I had a taste of my friend's matzoh ball soup, and it's legit. By the time we left, a line up had formed outside, and if I lived there, I would line up, too.

  IT'S-IT is a San Francisco company that has been making hipster ice cream sandwiches long before hipsters or ice cream sandwiches existed. IT'S-IT really is the original ice cream sandwich, and obviously, I must try it.   Nestled between two oatmeal cookie layers and coated in chocolate to seal in the mint ice cream, I devoured two of them, but remember thinking this could be better, but how? I mean, we did buy them at a Target with a view of the Hollywood sign in the near distance. This is not just a dream, but a reality. 

I know this is a hot dog, the famous Pink's Hot Dogs in Hollywood, but as I spent a week down there this late summer, and ate mostly SoCal tacos and tasty tasty food in beautiful al fresco settings, I found this hot dog to be near the equivalent of a certain sandwich aura. To my surprise, I ordered the "Martha Stewart" which is a 9" stretch dog that comes with relish, onions, bacon, chopped tomatoes, sauerkraut and sour cream. The dog had a nice bite to it, though it must have been 9" before cooking. Still, I used every single one of those napkins and could have used a couple more. I sat on their back patio in the sun, watching one of the Pink owners in her hot pink blazer, smoking in the back, waiting for the next photo op to start. It was a good view to eat this dog. I wouldn't order the Martha again, and technically it's not even a sandwich, but maybe it's a mentionable.

Advertised as the "Specialty Sandwich" on board the Oakland to Los Angeles Amtrak train, this $9.75 grilled cheese seems a safe vegetarian bet, just as a bagel and cream cheese does when faced with weird processed meat choices aboard the VIA Rail in Canada. The specialty allegedly features gruyere and smoked cheddar, however each cheese was tasteless, plastic, and greasy, cooling to reveal six slices of highly processed cheese product. The crisp, somewhat grainy bread absorbed cheese sweat from inside, completely obliterating any relief that the mustard or tomato could have provided, and was thoroughly saturated in a meaty residue from the grill on the outside. This sandwich leaves the kind of mouthfeel that a glass of water cannot wash away. Note: pack toothbrush in carry-on.