Am I weird for having no problem with eating a "dry" sandwich?

[themapleleaf]

@ParallelLines

The better the quality of the other ingredients, the more I want the meat, bread, and sometimes cheese to stand out. Like at a good deli. I don’t want pickles on anything - they overpower. But a good kosher dill on the side to add a sour note between bites? Great!

I LOVE Kosher dill pickles. Give me one on a toothpick as a topper for my sandwich, put it on the side, heck, use it to garnish my Bloody Caesar (done by the local Toronto restaurant chain The Pickle Barrel).

@needscoffee

One of my favorite sandwiches right now is rare roast beef on toasted bread (I like pumpernickel or very dark rye) with cranberry mustard and some horseradish sauce.

This is actually a good combination. If I had a Pastrami on Rye, a corned beef sandwich, a Reuben, whatever, I’d be happy to have it with the traditional mustard, and I do like horseradish. Both I think would go well with roast beef.

@Spoons

You would have liked “Bogie’s Sandwich Bar” back in the day. They were a small Toronto chain, maybe three or four locations, and you ordered your sandwich by filling out a form. On that form, you could check all that you wanted on your sandwich, and if you did not want something, you simply didn’t check it at all.

I’ve never been to this place, but sounds progressive. They had my philosophy. I think I would have liked it.

@Spoons

I don’t know if you ever got to eat at Toby’s, in Toronto. They did burgers and fries, and that was pretty much it. Oh, they might have had a green salad, and perhaps a brownie or ice cream for dessert, but their main claim-to-fame were their burgers.

One thing that they always had on the menu was what they called their “Honest Burger.” It was a cooked beef patty between two halves of a bun, and that was it. If you wanted anything else on it, there was mustard, relish, and ketchup on the table. Anything else, you ordered it: cheese, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, pickles, at 25c extra each.

I did eat at Toby’s a couple of times in my early adolescence. My memories of it are limited. If they had the condiments on the table, that’s great. That is IMO a solution to the whole discussion we’re having here. I always like it when a restaurant has a selection of condiments in the middle of the table that you can put on yourself as desired. If I owned a restaurant, equipping each table with a self-serve condiment selection would be a must.

On a more personal note, my own memories of Toby’s (would estimate I ate there 2 to 4 times) leave me with mixed feelings. On the positive side, they had great French Onion Soup, one of my most favorite things to eat in the whole world. Their Bull Terrier mascot was cute. And my very vague recollection of their burgers was that they were good quality, although I don’t remember them well enough to say if they would have ticked all my boxes. On the less positive side, I recall not liking that their main dishes were pretty much limited to burgers. As I mentioned in my OP, I’m actually not a big burger person – for me they are mainly fast food and I wouldn’t typically order them in a sit-down restaurant. Also, I wasn’t crazy about the decor (I remember the one that used to be at the Toronto Eaton’s Centre), which I recall as having a lot of black and the now-common feature of exposed ceiling infrastructure.

@Spoons

@Der_Trihs , if you do find yourself in Canada, look for a Harvey’s. It’s a fast food chain, but it will serve you a plain burger if you like. They default to plain, actually.

When your burger is ready, they ask you what you want on it. You tell them. There are many choices, laid out behind the glass (rather like Subway), and the person behind the counter will put whatever you want on your burger. There are many choices, and if you want more, just ask: “Mustard, relish, two pickles please, one slice of tomato, one raw onion ring and a few hot pepper rings,” for example. That’s what you’ll get, and you get to watch them make it for you. Of course, if you don’t want something, don’t ask for it; and if you want nothing at all, just say so, and you will get nothing at all.

The difference between Toby’s and Harvey’s is that Toby’s was a sit-down table service restaurant that also served beer and wine, while Harvey’s is fast food, where the strongest drink is Coke or coffee. Regardless, there is still a place where a plain burger will be a plain burger, if that’s what you want.

Yes, Harvey’s! I ate there regularly when I was last in Canada, and this was a big plus: I could choose what I wanted on the burger from a very nice selection of ingredients – indeed rather like Subway. And here we get full-circle to my original point. Harvey’s is indeed a classic fast food outlet – similar to McDonald’s or Burger King (the one I ate in was paired with Swiss Chalet and had chicken rotisserie offerings as well). Yet they have no problem asking you what you want on your burger, whereas at McD or BK they have standardized ingredients for each sandwich. (Oh, and Harvey’s beef patties are definitely done better than McDonald’s). If Harvey’s can ask you what you want on your burger, why can’t a slightly better “greasy spoon” (a private burger and grill joint, a diner, etc.) do so?