I agree, a good sandwich should balance. When I’m constructing one out of whatever I can find in the fridge, I look for one of each of these elements:
Then I try not to double up on too many, which might muddle the flavours too much. Simple is better. And a very little meat will suffice!
Okay, we’ve debated the maximum point at which a sandwich ceases to be a sandwich. What about the minimum point?
If I butter two slices of bread and put them together, is it a sandwich? Suppose I skip the butter and just put two slices of bread together? Suppose I just eat a single slice of bread? At what point (if any) has what I’m eating ceased to be a sandwich?
And if “no,” what about a slice of bread between two slices of bread?
The purpose of the bread is to contain something not otherwise easily eaten by hand and to protect your hands from whatever kind of mess might be created by the ingredients, like grease, oil, sticky stuff, moisture, gloppiness, whatever. So at minimum there should be something in the sandwich that the bread is acting as a shield and support for.
Sandwish. you wish you were a sandwich
Can you eat it as a sandwich? If you can’t pick it up as a unit and chomp on it as is, then you’ve got a nice pile of corned beef, but you don’t have a sandwich.
Growing up, my cousin loved her “ketchup sandwiches”. Which were: two slices of white Wonder bread… with ketchup. Even as a kid, I knew that just ain’t right, but she defeated me with the “well, what else would you call it?”
So, ketchup sandwich = sandwich.
Not according to my dad. A ketchup sandwich consists of two slices of Wonder bread smothered in ketchup, and in between a generous handful of Lay’s potato chips.
I would agree. There were also mayo sandwiches and butter sandwiches.
In terms of open-faced sandwiches, though, I think the need to have a topping other than butter (or ketchup or mayo), otherwise, that’s just buttered bread.
If beignets can be either choux pastries or yeast dough then I think sandwich can refer to two slices of bread* with a filling of some sort or a piece of bread with the filling on top and exposed.
*Or one piece folded over.
Opinions and gut feelings aside, we at least have legal precedent establishing that a burrito is not a sandwich and that the presence of at least two pieces of bread is necessary to constitute a sandwich.
Well, I’m sure Subway will be very interested to learn that they don’t serve sandwiches.
Well clearly we need to defer to the British Sandwich Association, which says
So there. “Filling” is required, therefore “open faced” just isn’t a sandwich.
Wow, this thread is just screaming out for a little Mitch Hedberg. (youtube warning)
Jump to the 30 second mark of this classic bit on the subject of overstuffed sandwiches.
Gravy soaked bread is very tasty to me.
Just had a very yummy out-of-season hot turkey and gravy fix with one of those. Call it what you like. 
I like them as well. I’m just saying my line with “sandwich” is more permissive than most’s, but I still have a line with you have to be able to eat it with your hands. The first time I had a hot turkey open-faced sandwich I was confused. I was expecting more of something like a crostini, I guess.
I would tend to agree with this. In order to qualify as a sandwich, the bread has to contain something. So two slices of bread and some butter is a sandwich. But two slices of bread by themselves are not. If you eat them, you’re not eating a sandwich, you’re eating some bread.
Well, here in the northeast I have learned to eat a lot of supposed “hand” food with a fork - we’ve had the pizza discussion, and I’ve lost count of how many burgers I had to finish on the plate. I would agree that some kinds of sloppy sandwiches, including open-faced, deserve a sub-category, but they’re still yummy stuff in or on bread… and I don’t know any other category of food that is primarily bread-borne that isn’t a sandwich. So I’ll accept “open-faced sandwich” for what it is and consider it a subcat of “sandwich” in general.
But no one liked my URL of Sandwich snark, so I’ll just sulk now.