BLT is a simple and elegant sandwich, with all ingredients harmonizing perfectly.

El D, you're taking that grilled cheese to a whole new level. The toast is a little too dark for my tastes but I can appreciate your opinion on the mayo.

dave,

Mayo is a cheat people use for a crispy exterior with minimal effort. If you're doing it the expert way you described, you can get an amazing crispy crust with butter. And better flavor.

The absolute best BLT is one with extremely fresh (non-toasted) white bread and no lettuce.

Fair enough, I'm hardly an expert cook. My training was in greasy spoons in middle America. If it ain't giving you a heart-attack, isn't enhanced with the cooks sweat, and isn't served with a heavy dose of venom from your service staff, it ain't worth eating.

+1 on no lettuce

Damn just this week I had a grilled cheese (butter style) with tomato and mixed cheeses and a cup of tomato soup on the side. It did seem like a superior lunch.

Given a terrible choice, I went grilled cheese because that with tomato soup was a comforting staple of childhood.

Terrible choice though.

Grilled cheese is a strange case. I never order them in restaurants, but I make them at home all the time. Also, a key element of the value of a grilled cheese is the effort to payoff ratio. They are so easy to make!

A good sandwich is all about the interplay of different flavors and textures. Where pulled pork and brisket sandwiches suffer is the lack of varying texture and flavor concentration. They can hit all the flavor notes with a good sauce, but you don’t get the interesting textures and pockets of flavors.

Truly great sandwiches like the bahn mi, Cubano, or Reuben give you depth in flavor and texture. On your banh mi you’ve got the pork base (which can cover all 5 flavors itself), along with the crunchy sweet and sour of pickled carrot and daikon, the rich creamy umami of the pate, the bitter and sour cilantro notes, salt and umami from the fish sauce, all wrapped in the slightly sweet baguette.

A BLT is less complex but provides a variety of flavor and texture. BLT gets points for simplicity- it’s easy to make at home. A plain grilled cheese with no pickle/tomato/sour notes is LOL and to choose that over a BLT is tantamount to admitting you have the taste buds of a five year old.

Brian,

Excellent post!


Love your banh mi description even better than mine. What a great sandwich!

I like Skittles too.

But at least I don't put ketchup on a ****ing hot dog.

You Chicago people are something else about your hot dogs.

You are from Chicago, right?

I was born there. But I grew up in the Arkansas Ozarks.

Squirrel and possum actually benefit from ketchup.

ugh, tomato soup WOAT.
what kind of weirdos want a bowl full of warm ketchup?

LMAO! Bowl of warm ketchup. The only way to do Tomato soup, for me, is with a fist full of garlic & herb croutons. Sometimes I'll make the grilled cheese extra crispy, dice it into tiny squares and dump them in the tomato soup. Progresso Tomato Basil is pretty elite, for a canned soup.

The more refined among us slurp tomato BISQUE with our grilled cheese of course.

I'm going to make a grilled cheese right now!

Cs3,


There’s a sophisticated gentleman who knows his soup.

Pacific hearty tomato bisque. Try it.
https://www.amazon.com/Pacific-Foods.../dp/B0052HXC1A

My local Banh mi shop also has jalapeno/thai chili, cucumber and their own home made sauce that has bits of meat fat in it (i'm not even sure what it is) + Sriacha/fish sauce on the table because why not?...

pouring one out for fried chicken GOAT

Pulled pork places have cole slaw,pickled cucumber, pickled jala, onions, bbq sauce, hot sauce on the table.

+1

It's obvious the only reason pork is winning this match up by so much is because it's more attainable.

Pulled pork is more attainable than fried chicken? lol

nice. i tried googling this and didn't get very far. what cities/regions do that? I have seen lots of youtube videos of such and such famous bbq restaurant and have sadly not seen that.