Sunday 13 February 2022

The Salad Sandwich Incident

For around US$1.5m, this rather unappealing sandwich could have been yours at Christie's!
Wayne Thiebaud, Sandwich, 1963

It was pure bloody-mindedness on my part that had me insisting for the about the third time that all I wanted was a plain salad sandwich, so I think, Dear Reader, I probably deserved what was served up to me. While I maintain I'm no fussy eater, I can be tiresome on occasion.

We had been in America far too long to know there was no such thing. A sandwich means a rather elaborate affair, unless you make it at home. A sandwich from a shoppe or café means a towering medley of full-flavoured ingredients between a slightly-sweetish bread of infinite variety. So I was getting nostalgic about simplicity whenever we went out. 

Indeed, my usual phlegm about most things was hardening into an uncommon obduracy on matters food in this Land of Plenty, and on this day I just had a hankering for an unfussy sandwich for our lunch on the go.

We were standing before the counter of a formerly unnoticed sandwich bar in a smart shopping mall in California, which appeared like a mirage of seeming familiarity among the tricked up fancies dotted around. The mall had previously been the scene of the Pretzel Incident, where Mr. P had been hypnotised by a snake-charmer selling pretzels as big as his head and dipped in the magical powders wherein their "flavours" were derived, and which shan't be spoken of.

He had already made his choice, a Roosevelt, for the dozen or so options listed in their full glory were named for past American Presidents. But I was struck by dismay at what these illustrious men offered. Between their dazzling array of breads, they out-competed with each other with assorted sliced meats and cheeses and condiments galore, all piled together every which way and sorted under their various presidencies, with each a cacophony of flavours in every bite.

After a quick scan, I could see no President, past or potentially even in the future, was going to go all back-to-basics to give me what I wanted, a simple salad sandwich, so I was going to have to leave my equanimity at the proverbial door and attempt ordering off-menu.

The young man behind the counter was having none of it.

    "A salad sandwich? I don't know ... " 

He turned to the chalkboard and pleaded help from the assembled Lincoln downwards.

    "Do you mean a ... Johnson?"

He was hoping I'd suddenly speak the language he knew.

    "No, just a plain salad sandwich."

    "Umm ... I don't know what that is."

    "You know, a sandwich with salad on it."

    "What do you mean by 'Salad'?"

    "The usual things. Lettuce, tomato, cucumber, oh, I see there's some carrot, so that would be nice." 

Even I knew that beetroot would be a bridge too far. There was no beetroot to be seen in its own little compartment arrayed before my sandwich maker.

    "Oh, and no onion!"

    "Are you sure? ..."

    "Yes, that would be perfect."

    "So, what kinda meat do you want on it?"

    "No meat, just salad."

He looked dubious. 

    "What kinda cheese? We've got ..."

    "No cheese, either. Just a plain salad."

    "And dressing? There's Ranch, there's Blue Cheese, there's ..."

    "No. Nothing."

    "Pickles? ..."

    "No! No pickles, no dressing, no extras of any kind! Just the salad ingredients on their own. On plain brown bread. Oh, and with butter. Thanks."

    "Butter??"

He now looked utterly baffled but I'd turned aside to let him assemble my simple salad sandwich while Mr. P muttered admonishments to me about my intractability over such things for he was more than satisfied with his vertiginous tower of sliced Italianate meats of every description and assorted cheeses and exotiques like sun-dried this and marinated that and mysterious dollops of complicated dressing. (Which makes me think maybe it was a Kennedy not a Roosevelt he ordered?) My chastisement lasted the short wait for the much-anticipated sandwich but I accepted it without demur. 

We took our brown paper bags off to sit in the shade for our lunch. And then my first bite was straight into the unwrapped rectangular pat of butter sitting atop my simple, undressed salad between two slices of unbuttered brown bread.


Image credits: Christies's


31 comments:

  1. Sandwiches can be over-the-top and clearly your husband had one such sandwich. They are monster sandwiches and I personally do not care for their enormity. Occasionally, I want a salad sandwich and ask for a "veggie sandwich" and I select the veggies and bread to get a custom sandwich of a modest size.

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    1. It's a curious thing, the gigantic sandwich which sweeps up all the ingredients on offer. I may need to pen an Ode to the Perfect Salad Sandwich one day, dear Susan. Or an elegy. Iambic pentameter works nicely with "butter the bread to the edge", doesn't it?

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  2. My only experience of an American sandwich was in Miami. I ordered a 'Steak Sandwich' in an eatery which was advertised as costing $1. I received a huge fat steak between two slices of bread. It was sensational, and had cost me small change. This was in about 1983.

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    1. Isn't it interesting how a mere sandwich can be so memorable, dear Cro? The Earl of Sandwich would be impressed with what you rustled up for $1.

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  3. Hahaha, Pip! I enjoyed The Salad-Incident VERY much.
    It made me think of the scene in "When Harry met Sally" - when Sally rattles off a very specific order for dinner. (Though your order was just the opposite: basic and healthy.)
    As Coco Chanel said: "Simplicity is the Keynote of all true Elegance."
    And once I read: "Elegance is not being noticed, it's about being remembered."
    I think that waiter will - remember you.

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    1. Dear Britta, you are being too kind, I fear! I expect I was remembered for a reason other than elegance. The sandwich maker probably saw me as a Grade 1 pest and punished me with putting the blob of butter on top of the lettuce leaf instead of buttering the bread. If not that then he'd be eternally puzzling over once encountering a crazy lady who saw butter as a vegetable, hahah!

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  4. I have given up with sandwiches that are so big I cannot eat them and now make my own before leaving home and take them with me. I am self sufficient where possible and in my quest for a quiet life sometimes I will visit McDonalds to be sure of getting food I recognise and can eat comfortably when abroad.

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    1. I get all nostalgic for the familiar picnic of a wrapped sandwich and a Thermos of tea when one would go out and about. Little picnic spots beside highways were favoured eateries in times past, and I always look fondly at an old-timey couple standing by their car with their picnic cups in hand when whizzing past them at 110kph. But I digress ... You're a sensible girl, dear Rachel.

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  5. Hello Pipistrello, As they say, When in Rome.... In America (where, incidentally, I had never heard the term "salad sandwich") people usually like to spread their own butter. Also, I think that you would have a hard time finding a salad sandwich that even approximates your vision of one in Taiwan. That said, near my old apartment was a late-night restaurant where I got Taiwan-style salad sandwiches on a kind of toasted sesame-seed roll they have here called shao bing. This blog shows the general idea, although the top should be liberally covered with sesame seeds:
    https://janotts.pixnet.net/blog/post/23424674

    --Jim

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    1. Yes, dear Jim, I think I started this whole post wrong-footed for I hadn't realised that a Salad Sandwich is an Australian National Dish only. A Veggie Sandwich doesn't have the same ring and it may have caused less confusion at the outset but there would never had been an Incident to follow. Nor was that pat of butter going to get spread by the unsuspecting eater once the sandwich had been taken away, haha!

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    2. Wow! Your shao bing is quite the celebration of alfalfa :) Which, incidentally, is one of the oft-found ingredients of the Australian Salad Sandwich and its bigger sibling, the Salad Roll. But like onion, that was one of those ingredients which polarised eaters and deemed Optional.

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  6. I recall being overwhelmed by the size of the sandwiches - we learnt to order one and share, otherwise they were attacked afresh the following lunchtime!

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    1. Dear Rosemary, we were schooled by friends before we left for America to order one thing when out and share it but Mr. P and I do have different tastes for foodstuffs sometimes so there were few opportunities for compromise :)

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  7. If you had been visiting the UK then your request for a plain salad sandwich would have been fulfilled automatically served with buttered bread. We always make ourselves a simple sandwich before taking off for a day out, but in the States a simple sandwich has been taken to extradordinary heights!
    Picturing you standing at the sandwich bar was amusing💚

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    1. Dear Rosemary, the spiritual home of the Sandwich will always start with the right foundation! Of course, all my hangry grumblings would have been cut off at the pass if only I'd packed my own sandwich beforehand. But to do so, first one must select a loaf of bread ... and in the Land of Plenty that is an exercise in itself!

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  8. Portions in North America just keep getting bigger and bigger. As a Canadian, I would have no clue what a salad sandwich is. That’s not a term we use here. Perhaps a veggie sandwich? -Jenn

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    1. Dear Jenn, the portions were huge everywhere, and this was over twenty years ago! You are right, my tale of woe was all about a Veggie Sandwich, as it turns out :)

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  9. . . . . . vision of you biting into a pat of butter has me spluttering into my morning mug of strong black java!
    Great account of the American sandwich on the go system, something we stay away from unless on a road trip and desperate! A grilled cheese and tomato panini here at home is good though.
    Pip, have you been back since that visit 20 years ago?
    Hugs, Mary

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    1. I apologise for any wasted morning coffee, dear Mary, hahah! Grilled cheese and tomato toasties are a top-shelf choice for us, too, but it's amazing how wrong that delight can turn in the wrong hands. So many deft tricks to get the perfection which we all create at home! Funny, too, how a road trip eatery can be a sublime experience in one country but memorable for an entirely other reason in another. And there lies a deft rebuttal to the oft-cried complaint of the global homogeneity of travel these days! ... I may have to explore this idea further :) ... And I last travelled to America in 2011, twice actually, but no visits were had to any Sandwich Shoppes.

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  10. DO TELL this AMERICAN where you were?NOT IN CORTE MADERA I assume?
    SAN FRANCISCO is MY GUESS........
    NO THAT REQUEST WOULD STILL BE GIVEN A BLANK LOOK TODAY!
    However the butter should have been SPREAD!That's a NO BRAINER.......I do get what JIM was referring TOO but a sandwich with a square piece of BUTTER?!
    ONLY AN IDIOT would do THAT!Then again I bet he was YOUNG and not brought up making sandwiches in his kitchen!
    YOU should have seen the HALF TIME during SUPER BOWL SUNDAY yesterday!
    I turned to my HUSBAND and said, "NO WONDER WE ARE SUCH A MESS!!"If people call this entertainment WE are a LOST CAUSE!MEN CLUTCHING CROTCHES NO SMILING,MOVING AS IF THEY WERE F---ing!I AM SO TIRED OF ALL OF THIS!!!!!
    XOXOX

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    1. Dearest Contessa, in the back of my mind I had the notion it may have been Corte Madera but I wasn't going to point any fingers, hahah! After the initial shock, and I dare say some cranky expostulating etc etc, I could only see the funny side. Yes, he was probably very young and had rote learnt how to assemble his Presidents, or he was plain sneaky!! The Super Bowl nonsense doesn't touch us here and in all my times to your country, it has passed us blissfully by. Crank up the gramophone with some Opera and danceable whatnots and make your own delicious entertainments! You could start a grassroots movement and bring fresh change to people's lives!

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  11. Why would I not be surprised?
    Personally, I'd not eat any sandwich anymore that would not be prepared by myself.
    And although I consider people using capital letters all the time ... ahem ... suboptimal ... to put it politely ...: Contessa's last paragraph leaves me nodding nodding nodding:
    Unforunately, neither she nor I are be able to make certain people wake up tomorrow and speak a very rare Hindu dialect.

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    1. For you seem wise & sensible, dear Sean, as evidenced by the, ahem, superlative standard of the FWH Comments Department and its fluency in a very rare Hindu dialect ... notwithstanding the occasional burst of exuberant caps and exclamation marks and wild grammar making merry with it!

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  12. 😂🤣😂🤣😂 ….. Oh Pip …… I can so relate to this. We were in California and were in The Red Lobster ( I think ) I just wanted crab claws and salad.
    “ What potatoes would you like “
    “ I don’t want potatoes thank you “
    “ You can have fries, baked potato, plain potatoes potato salad etc etc “
    “No potatoes thank you “
    “ What dressing would you like in your salad “
    “ Just vinaigrette “
    “ We have Ranch, honey and mustard, Italian, Caesar, Green Goddess, Thousand Island ……
    …… and so it went on !!!!! They just don’t get a simple meal ! XXXx


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    1. Oh, dear Jackie, you miscreant! Attempting to deviate from the script!! The Options are not optional but choices amongst mandatory components of your otherwise delicious-sounding meal, hahah! As for simplicity, we have stories belonging on the other end of the food abundancy spectrum viz a dinner in Sorrento in Italy when Mr. P ordered the salsiccio and got a single grilled sausage on an otherwise naked plate. Expostulating with the waiter about the undesirability of tackling such a "meal" resulted in the plate coming back with a few shreds of radicchio to adorn it! xxx

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  13. Years ago I went to a conference in the US where 12 of us had lunch around one large table. The waiter brought bowls of salad for each guest and I, an Australian, naturally put mine aside until the main course came. The waiter couldn't bring the main course out until everyone had finished their salads, and everyone else was too polite to tell me what to do. I laugh now, but at the time it was horribly uncomfortable.

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    1. Ah, the subtleties differences that divide we English-speakers could fill a book, dear Hels. I'd forgotten about the salad starter :)

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  14. Oh the pain.
    I remember a British lady writing home to tell her mum "No one here makes a normal sandwich. You need the mouth of Goliath' to get through one of them.
    I suppose most folks poo-poo simple sandwiches and want titanic-sized things with combinations not normally found in nature. Too bad, as the simple taste of a few ingredients is good. good enough.

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    1. Dear Ur-spo, is it not the boa constrictor that can unhinge its jaw to chomp down on its dinner that might be of wider diameter than its own head? And if dinner may be topped and tailed with a pith helmet and a pair of shoes and socks, that can only add to the exotic flavourings. Such an inspiration!

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  15. Wonderful punch line! I do wonder if there is another word in the vocabulary over there to represent the sort of sandwich you mean, though. (If so, it may well be obsolete by now I guess.)

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    1. Thank you, dear Jenny! And, from the able assistance from the comments that here ensued, it would appear that a Veggie Sandwich was probably going to tick the box. So simple, in the end, but no Story to then had.

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