Bluishtreereview posted this picture of a Monte Cristo. Such a sad story, especially because it looks so delicious!

bluishtreereview:

Sadly, I can appreciate complicated sandwiches but I can no longer consume them. My doctor put me on a diet that excludes many of my favorite items: wheat, sugar, dairy, and worst of all alcohol.

There’s a Monte Cristo to make any person that appreciates a complicated sandwich drool. If you note it contains 3 items that I can’t eat, beyond the frame of this lovely photo is the fourth item, I can no longer consume: an Irish coffee. So long Monte Cristo you will forever be in my memories.

bluishtreereview asked: How do I send you a photo of a complicated sandwich? I have a great version of a Monte Cristo from Hoboken.

You can email it to me at complicatedsandwich@gmail.com! I can’t wait to see it—thanks!

This looks delicious! Fried egg, bacon, yellow pepper (or is it a tomato?), and lettuce—but I think there’s something else right under the top slice of bread! Good bread too, by the way. Not too complicated, but complicated enough!

charlenestraw:

Into the belly

This looks good!

Wow! I like the looks of this one, although I have no idea what’s in it except for the lettuce and the different colored peppers. Actually, I’m not even sure if they’re peppers—they could be different colored tomatoes! I’m going to change my mind and say they’re tomatoes—they look puckery and slimy like tomatoes. As for the main ingredient in the sandwich, I don’t know what it is! It could be chicken. But it could also be some kind of fish I don’t know about it. And, if we’ve learned anything, it could always be a mushroom. It might even be zucchini, but I hope not. What do you think?

Kudos on the good bread.

Hey everybody! Remember when I posted about the Monte Cristo? Well, I ate one, and here it is! It tasted better than it looks in the picture. I’m not in the mood for it often, but when I can’t decide between breakfast and lunch, it’s the perfect solution! This one, as you can see, was served open faced with the Swiss cheese melted across the top. I poured the maple syrup underneath to soak into the French toast. Delicious! I had it at the wonderful Windsor Cafe in Brooklyn, NY.

Here’s a nice-looking sandwich. Obviously, it’s got a lot of red onions that are actually purple, which makes it nicer to look at than actually eat. (And just think about what your breath will smell like after eating all those red/purple onions—yikes!) I can’t really tell what the other ingredients are. There’s a leaf poking out that might be mint or basil or something like that—I don’t know too much about herbs. (Even though my name is Herb!) And there’s some stuff that looks like meat. On the top it looks like turkey, but on the bottom it looks kind of like fish, maybe an anchovy or a sardine. Maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s neither! As always, it could be a mushroom. One thing I’ve learned since starting this blog is that a lot of things look like mushrooms.

P.S. The toast is a nice touch.

Hey, folks—Thanksgiving is almost here! And you know what that means! Yeah, yeah, turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and all that … but everybody knows the best part of Thanksgiving is leftovers!

As a lover of sandwiches, especially complicated sandwiches, I love leftovers, because they give you the opportunity to create something new out of something old. It’s kind of like rap music—creating a new song through sampling parts of older songs!

However, there are pitfalls to this approach. Case in point—this “Thanksgiving Dinner” sandwich:

Yuck! There’s a difference between a complicated sandwich and a chaotic sandwich! Complicated sandwiches are sophisticated—they have a lot of ingredients, but everything goes together, either complementing or contrasting something else. It’s a work of art in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Just throwing a bunch of things into a sandwich does not make a complicated sandwich. It’s just a lot of parts that don’t make a unified whole.

You’re probably thinking, but Herb, those are all things you’d have on your plate together at Thanksgiving dinner! True, but just because things go together on a plate doesn’t mean you’d put them together in a sandwich. Why do you think certain restaurants give you the option of ordering plates or sandwiches?

My point is this: when you just throw ingredients together willy-nilly, you’re ignoring the artistry of the complicated sandwich. I’m all for experimentation and innovation, but it has to lead to deliciousness. The sandwich above will lead only to disgust and probably diarrhea.

Instead of throwing all your leftovers together into one sandwich, I would suggest using each one as the basis for a new sandwich that incorporates other things. For example, you could make a turkey sandwich with cheese, mustard and fresh vegetables—or you could chop up the turkey and make turkey salad! The cranberry sauce could become the basis of a tangy spread that you could use on just about anything! And the stuffing … well, I’m not sure what to do with the stuffing, but you get the idea. Before long, your leftovers will have multiplied into numerous delicious treats, instead of one disgusting mess!

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! And remember, a complicated sandwich is a work of art, not a dumping ground.

This sandwich is not extremely complicated—apart from the bread and the condiments, it’s only got four ingredients (five, if you count the parsley). But it sure looks delicious! It’s pretty obvious what everything is, but I’m having fun pretending each ingredient is something different and unusual! Wanna play? Let’s remix this sandwich!

Let’s see, there are a couple of sundried tomatoes, but if you use your imagination, they just might be dates! Wouldn’t that be interesting! Okay, then there are some globs of melted cheese, but the one in the front looks like it could be a scallop, or some kind of whitefish. Then there’s a red pepper, but if you make your eyes real fuzzy you can pretend it’s a shrimp tail. (My remix of this sandwich keeps getting more and more seafood-y!) The meat looks like prosciutto, but you could pretend it’s something else, like ham or corned beef or thin-sliced bacon! Actually, let’s just say it’s prosciutto, since that’s better than any of those things. And the parsley’s just parsley—you can’t pretend that’s something else.

So now we’ve got a prosciutto-scallop-shrimp-and-date sandwich! Wow, I might have to make one of these for real!

All in all, this looks like a delicious sandwich, whether in its real or remixed form! It’s got good bread, and some sort of mustard or oil or olive tapinade. I’m going to say it’s a tapinade because there are some olives in the background. Remember, when you’re eating a sandwich, it is what it is, but when you’re looking at a picture of one, it can be anything you want!

Happy National Sandwich Day! As you probably know, this holiday is celebrated every year the day after election day. Schools and post offices are closed and general mirth prevails. It’s a very special occasion this year, because National Sandwich Day happens to fall on the Earl of Sandwich’s actual birthday! How’s that for coincidence!

You’ve probably been reading the many articles, essays, and point-counterpoints in major news sources about this special day. Here’s one list of popular sandwiches, from something called LAist (which I guess has to do with either Louisiana or singing, either that or they don’t know how to spell “list”!).

As you may have noticed, a lot of the sandwiches on that list (or LAist, whatever!) look pretty good, but they’re not very complicated. That’s why I propose a National Complicated Sandwich Day! It’s all well and good to honor sandwiches, but let’s face it, complicated sandwiches are so much better. National Complicated Sandwich Day could be on Sir Nesbit Beauregard-Beauregard’s birthday. (If you don’t know who he is, go back to my early post called “History.”) Sir Nesbit’s birthday is on December 31, a week after Christmas and right at the end of the year, so there should be no conflicts!

In my earlier post about the history of complicated sandwiches, I forgot to include a picture of Sir Nesbit. So here it is! Enjoy while you’re celebrating National Sandwich Day with a sandwich (a complicated one, I hope!)!