Every culture, pretty much, seems to have a characteristic sandwich (and a dumpling variant, but that’s another topic). What’s yours? Do you like it/hate it/accept it with certain modifications?
I grew up mostly near Chicago, so that means Italian beef and gyros. I actually prefer homemade “pot-roast” shredded Italian beef with plenty of pepperoncini, on a mayo-slathered toasted roll, but I’ll still pull over for Al’s or Portillo’s when I’m in the area. As for gyros, it’s all good as long as it has tzatziki and feta. I prefer it with the full salad, though. Onions, cukes, slivered lettuce, tomato, maybe a couple olive slices. Georges near Lake Michigan has a decent version.
I live on the east side of Indiana now, and there’s really only one local sandwich I can think of. A pork tenderloin sandwich, which is basically pork schnitzel pounded thin and wide before deep-frying in breadcrumbs, usually with mustard, lettuce, and tomato on a comically tiny roll. A runner-up might be a fried bologna sandwich, served similarly… I’ll take the former any time.
What’s good in your neck of the woods? My favorite food form is probably the sandwich, so I love hearing about new ones.
Primantis (Pronounced “Prim-MAN-nees”, not “Pri-MONT-ees”, unless you want to sound like a total noob)
All of their sandwiches include fries, cole slaw and tomatos – ON the bun. Messy, but oh so good. (And they’re opening up a location ten minutes from my house! JOY!)
Also Chicago is the jibarito, a Puerto Rican inspired sandwich created at El Borinquen, which basically amounts to a garlicky cheesesteak on a “bun” made of smashed, fried plantains.
We don’t have a special sandwich up here in the Seattle area so much as we have a condiment, that can go on just about anything - burgers, dogs, fries, hot sandwiches, etc. It doesn’t have a standard name - sometimes it’s special sauce, or just “sauce”, or “goop”, or “fry sauce”, or it’s named after the place that’s selling it. Dick’s calls it “tartar sauce”. It’s basically a mixture of yellow mustard, mayo and/or Miracle Whip, and chopped pickles, and it takes pretty much the same at every place that serves it.
Other than that, we’ve got the Seattle-style hot dog, which is grilled and topped with grilled onions, spicy mustard, hot peppers, and a wedge of cream cheese.
In DC, it’s the half-smoke (Half-smoke - Wikipedia). I didn’t know it was just a DC thing until I was in my 30s and my wife from NH had no idea what I was talking about.
Cudighi sandwich. Cudighi is the actual sausage, and you see it on pizzas and such, but mostly it’s a sandwich thing. Lots of pasty shops also serve cudighi sandwiches.
The best answer I can come up with for Cleveland is the Romanburger (a sort of bastard love-child of a hamburger and an Italian sub), but it’s only sold by one chain, that just happens to not have expanded out much beyond northeast Ohio. Nobody else even attempts to imitate it.
North Carolina, and the barbecue sandwich: slow-roasted pork marinated in vinegar, sugar, pepper, chiles, and spices, pulled, served on a cheap white hamburger bun with additional sweet/spicy vinegar to spritz on top. Cole slaw on the side, not on top, you heretic. It’s mighty satisfying.
I would say the way it is served there, yes. It’s a spin on the Polish sausage sandwich, but it’s a little different than anywhere else I’ve had it. When my wife last visited Cleveland, I had her bring back a Polish Boy to me here in Chicago, land of Polish sausages.
Read the Wikipedia article here for further details (though I’m sure you are well familiar with it, being from “the land of the Cleves.”) I’ve never had a Polish served that way anywhere else. I would absolutely say it qualifies as distinctive to the Cleveland area.
I’ll take the former any time.