A Pittsburghian Experience @ Sandwiched

I have oft been told that Pittsburgh, more than any other American City, embraces artery clogging like true Steelheads.

(While I feel weird writing about a city's culinary chops without ever having been there, I feel that my parent's degrees at UPITT as well as a lifetime of Steeler's supporting gives me at least partial street-cred)

While Pittsburgh has no one genre-defining sandwich like its' Pennyslvania brother Philly (pun count #1... think about it) , Steeltown has produced several important innovations to the sandwich game:


The Big Mac was invented in Pittsburgh by an early enterprising McDonald's franchisee by the name of Jim Delligatti.




More relevant to this actual blog entry , was the great innovation started at Primanti Brothers. A quick google search of "Pittsburgh Sandwiches" turns up a number of hits for this storied restaurant, whose defining feature is having fries INSIDE the sandwich.

Watching a Food network special on must-eat sandwiches, I got curious about this bust-gusting addition to the sandwich, and decided to scour the streets of Toronto to find a fries-inclusive sandwich of my own.

Luckily, my search took me only a few blocks away from work - to Sandwiched at Church and Gerrard (377 Church St).

The joint offers essentially two items: crepes and fry-stuffed sandwiches.

After much sandwich consternation, i decided on the roast beef. In front of the Panini press, deep fryer and crepe maker, there was an impressive array of condiments, sauces (I counted 5 variations of hot sauce) with a Subway-like assembly line.



I fabu-sized my roast beef with lettuce, pickles , banana peppers, mozzarella cheese, pickles, hot sauce and mayo


Despite the calorically-dubious innovation of adding fries to the sandwich, I must say that it is a spot-on taste-wise. The fries added a delightfuly salty and crispy texture to each bite which was intensified by the crispy baguette after it had been pressed. In terms of aesthetics, the fries gave the sandwich a Dagwood-esuqe, towering appreance.

The biggest problem with the meal was that when I showed up with 5 work chums, it seems to have over-stripped their sandwich capacity. They only have one person one in the line, and over the course of our order, the man behind the counter had to: assemble sandwiches, put fries into fryer, carefully watch two crepes, and take our payements. So if you are planning on having a Sandwich themed Box-Social at ye olde local sandwich shoppe, i'd probably recommend taking it elsewhere (perhaps to the relatively nearby Mutual Street deli which will be reviewed shortly, though based on theme name alone the Sandwich Box seems more apropo).

Sandwiched features daily specials for something like 5.99 with a pop (Tuesday is Roast beef day), and they offered many other seemingly delicious offerings like the Super BLT (back bacon AND side bacon) as well as some veggie options.

All in all, I truly felt that Fries-in-Sandwich, invented by those wacky Pittsburgher's, is alive, well, artery-clogging AND delicious in Toronto.

9/10 OPA's

Pros:

• Fries in Sammich!
• Reviewing of Sandwich allowed me to use appropriatly use the term Gestalt Effect (defn: fries in sandwich = better than fries + sandwich)
• Great condiment choice
• Attractive price point

Cons:

• Can be very slow if there is a crowd.
• A little bit grimey inside.