A Sandwich with a Size Complex
Sandwiches are like people: You can tell a lot about them based on how they present themselves.
Take the humble turkey and cheese sandwich, for example. It doesn’t overaccessorize, it’s dependable, easy to get along with, and something you’d feel totally happy to see at most events.
Or look at the Connecticut hot lobster roll; the Coco Chanel of sandwiches. It picks a few fancy ingredients — lobster, brioche, butter — and calls it a day. I’m sure someone at some point told it to “add some parsley or lettuce or something,” but the lobster roll was like, “shan’t,” because it knew that — in its case — less was more.
Then there are the sandwiches that attest to the “more is more” school of sandwiching, like the Bobby. Not content with simple, every ingredient needs to be marinated, pickled, brined, chopped, seeded, roasted, toasted, and assembled with all parts present and accounted for. At the end of the day, they pull it off spectacularly, but it takes them days to get ready. So even though they’re pretty fantastic, sometimes the effort is too much.
And that brings me to this week’s sandwich coming to you from the Hoosier State — The Pork Tenderloin Sandwich. The list describes it as, “a breaded, deep-fried pork cutlet topped with traditional burger fixings like pickles, onions, lettuce, ketchup, and mustard.” But a quick tickle of the keyboard ivories made it clear that this sandwich wasn’t content being JUST a sandwich. This is a sandwich that was simple but decided that, in order to be a cool sandwich, needed to go big.
It didn’t do this by piling higher. It did it by going wider. But it didn’t bring the bread along for the ride. Its proportions are all wrong.
The pork in this sandwich is portions of pork loin that are pounded wide and thin, marinated in a buttermilk bath, then breaded and fried before being put on a [comically small in comparison] burger bun and topped with mayo, pickles, tomatoes, and onion.
As has become our new Sunday usual, Nate manned the frying station and I manned the little man on my hip, and Nate got the meat fried and the sandwiches assembled fairly quickly. So there was nothing left for us to do but sit down, eat, and judge mercilessly.
Ultimately, the sandwich (once you ate enough excess pork to actually get to the “sandwich” part) was fine. The pork was moist and the toppings worked well. But — it was just too much.
Honestly, the breading and frying doesn’t bring anything exceptional to the pork. If you replaced it with a piece of fried chicken, I don’t think you’d notice a huge difference. And since chicken is less expensive, it feels like the better choice if you’re hankering for a homemade, deep-fried meat option.
That’s not to say this sandwich doesn’t have a place in the zeitgeist of sandwiches. I just think that it’s probably best enjoyed at midwest eateries who put it on their menu as a food challenge where — if you manage to eat the whole thing — you get a T-shirt, a polaroid up on the wall, and all of the regrets of reliving the experience of eating that much food in one sitting. Because AMERICA.
