Everything’s Bigger in New Jersey
Wikipedia says that the Monte Cristo sandwich is a take on the croque-monsieur and that American cookbooks in the 1950s called it the “French sandwich.”
When Americans use French as an adjective, we mean that something is a little fancy, sexy, chic, complex. The Monte Cristo is none of those things. It is the most American of all American foods. Who needs hamburgers? Screw suffragettes, we should put a Monte Cristo on the new ten dollar bill. But make it the one at Bennigan’s.
There are only so many Bennigan’s left in America and it’s hard to believe once you’ve bitten into their “Word Famous” Monte Cristo or split a platter of their 6 inch long mozzarella sticks. There are men in America with penises smaller than the Bennigan’s mozzarella stick, which is maybe why they aren’t into franchising them in case anyone else notices.
When you live in Manhattan, you spend most of your day eating or talking about food. We nibble on dry-fried Sichuan beef, debate the merits of wood and coal fired ovens, and think we know it all. Until we have a Bennigan’s in Times Square, though, we know nothing.
Three dining companions and I recently reminisced about the Bennigan’s Monte Cristo. Was it the best sandwich ever? Was it as good as we remember? Where can we find one? Like most things Americans should be a little ashamed of, it could be had in New Jersey.
Door to door, it’s about thirty minutes with Sunday traffic from the Lincoln Tunnel, but it is a different world. With sprawling parking lots and chain restaurants boasting all your favorite foods on the way in. We gazed out the windows, pointing at various shopping centers in the wild, like tourists probably do on an African safari.
‘Oh, we should go to Uno’s and get a pizza!’
‘Houlihans! Do you remember Houlihans?’
‘No, Red Robin all the way, guys.’
The one city kid in the car looked nervous. ‘Guys, there’s a really good Japanese food court outside of Fort Lee. If the Monte Cristo isn’t, I mean, we could…’
We cut him off. We can have perfect ramen and tempura any day below Houston Street.
The Bennigan’s was half filled with Sunday Funday-ers, the girls in black stretch pants and oversized football jerseys; every baseball hat cocked just-so-crookedly on the guys’ heads. Beer towers and burgers abounded, but we tried not to get distracted. We split five apps and then ordered four, one each, Monte Cristo sandwiches.
The waitress looked a little nervous after we devoured the wings, nachos, mozzarella sticks, a Bavarian pretzel with orange cheese. A manager brought out our sandwiches especially for us, joking about the quantity of food.
Oh, we can do it. But we all sort of shifted in our booth, waiting for someone to dig in. We had gotten in a car and crossed the George Washington Bridge. We were going to eat this fucking sandwich.
For the record, it is the best Monte Cristo you will ever eat. It’s stuffed amply with meat and gooey cheese, the fry on the outer layer thick and crunchy and just greasy enough.
You don’t have to ask where the ham is sourced from because you don’t want to know. It’s everything you need a Monte Cristo to be. We each made it through about two halves before sheepishly asking the waitress for boxes who, without any sense of irony told us that, “everything is really bigger in Jersey.”
We got back into the car barely able to breathe. There’s something to be said for the Monte Cristo but it’s not something you can do everyday and you have to wonder what happened to you, that you’ve resorted to eating a fried sandwich dusted with powder sugar in the middle of nowhere. It might be best to wait for Danny Meyer to ‘rethink’ it for Manhattan food snobs. That way, everyone else can have the Bennigan’s version.
