Close only counts in horseshoes and silly sandwich blogs.

As a wise person once said, “if at first you don’t succeed, you still gotta eat, you know?”

The best bagel I’ve ever eaten was in New York City. The best hot chocolate I’ve ever tasted was in Paris. The best ramen was in Tokyo. The best queso was in San Antonio. The best hot dog was at a ballpark.

“Calories don’t count when you’re watching other people burn calories.” — The mantra of the American public

But saying all that is like saying, “the best beach I’ve ever been to was by the ocean.” Obviously. Where else are you going to find the world’s best bagels? Des Moines? No offense to Des Moines, but I just don’t feel like it’s the go-to destination for people seeking bagel perfection — but nor would I expect it to be. Not every place can be the place to find the best [insert food type]. Maybe you can claim to have “the best pizza in Savannah!” or “the best Korean BBQ in West St. Paul!” but there are certain meccas for certain types of food.

Los Angeles is a big city with tons of food options. But are they all the best food options? Hot take: No.

Because they know that no one here knows how to barbecue them.

For starters, they boast breakfast burritos, but it’s very hard to find the (clearly superior) breakfast taco anywhere. Pizza in Los Angeles is ok — but I’ve had better pizza in almost every city that I’ve lived in — including a very small college town, Columbia, MO (here’s looking at you, Shakespeares’s Pizza. Love you. Mean it). And don’t get me started on queso. I’ve had some nonsense excuses for it here, but honestly, Rotel and Velveeta are a thousand times better than the fancy-pants concoctions some restaurants try to serve up, (just ask the New York Times).

A New York Times recipe so complicated, only drunk college co-eds and mildly supervised toddlers can do it.

This brings me to this week's sandwich and our subsequent pickle. Going by the bible that is this list, Kansas was up to bat with the deceivingly simple sounding Burnt Ends sandwich, “The crispy ends of smoked brisket are tossed with barbecue sauce and thrown onto a bun or sliced bread.”

With all of three ingredients (burnt ends, barbecue sauce, and bread), this sandwich seemed like it would be easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. We knew we would have to buy the meat for this one because, as stated before, we live in an apartment and don’t have the ability to cook anything like smoked brisket. But that’s fine. We’re more “Man vs. Food” than “The Barefoot Contessa.” We’re here to eat.

Me on Sundays. (Yes, I look like a young Kate Hudson, but only on Sundays).

But it turns out that finding Burnt Ends in Los Angeles is like finding a preschool class without a kid named Jackson: impossible. I looked at every barbecue restaurant within a thirty-mile radius of us and found exactly one place that boasted “Kansas City style Burnt Ends.” But that was fine by me because ONE PLACE WAS ALL WE NEEDED!

So I placed a pre-order with the place (Muddle & Twist in North Hollywood, for those wondering), gave myself a pat on the back for doing all the hard work of googling things and waited for Sunday to arrive.

Ah. Still not Sunday. Right.

On Sunday afternoon, we packed the kid into the car and went to pick-up the food as a family because the family that runs errands together, stays together (also, it’s quarantine. This was the most exciting outing we’ve had in weeks). When we arrived, I masked up and went inside to get the order. As I handed over my credit card, I idly skimmed the menu by the register and I noticed that their printed menu is different than their online menu. The printed menu says “Kansas City Burnt Ends, Muddle & Twist style*.”

I knew that the “*” was no good.

Actual footage of me reading the footnote.

I followed that * to a footnote that said, “Chopped up pieces of brisket and burnt ends, covered in barbecue sauce.”

For those not following what this means, I’ll translate: Their burnt ends are not burnt ends.

But what was I supposed to do? Go full Karen on them for inaccurate advertising? Nah. I’ll save my crazy-lady rants for something important, like how insanely insane it is that there is now a Twilight book that tells the same bad story from a different character's perspective! DUDE. STEPHANIE MEYERS JUST FAN-FICTIONED HERSELF AND PEOPLE ARE WILLINGLY READING IT. Didn’t people realize it was a poorly written, nonsense story with awful characters the first time around?????

I guess the title “I have no original ideas” was taken.

Just, ugh.

Anyway. Sandwiches.

There was nothing we could do about the distinct lack of actual burnt ends in our burnt ends purchase except eat the delicious concoction and write about it later. So here we are.

Look! A WHOLE piece of a burnt end! I feel like the cheerleading team that makes the finals because seven other teams get disqualified for not abiding by the handbook's guidelines for use of hair glitter.

The sandwich, while not authentically burnt ends, was a little oily, perhaps slightly overly sauced, but overall very tasty. Because of its chopped and heavily sauced nature, it’s a sandwich that lends itself to a litany of sins, so I’d be surprised if we didn’t enjoy it.

Still, I can’t say that this one should rank amongst the top sandwiches we’ve had thus far, if only because we seem to have gotten by with a participation trophy this week. We tried. We didn’t fully succeed, but not for lack of effort. It was a fail, but a tasty fail. I’ll go ahead and go fully out on this limb and say that those are the best types of fails.

I guess I’ll have to keep eating more delicious things until I get it right.