What makes sammies run?

AvoEatery’s B.L.A.T., top, adds avocado and a lot of sass to the classic club-style sandwich; above.

A streak of exciting sandwich options turns a staple of the lunchbox into works of culinary indulgence

Text and Photography
ARNOLD WAYNE JONES  |  Executive Editor
jones@dallasvoice.com

We call many sandwiches by different names, even when they are just bread, protein and garnish. (Point of controversy: “A hot dog is a sandwich; a taco is not.” Discuss.) Well, I’m willing to defy that reductionist view. Some sandwiches really are unique. A Cubano can have multiple things in it, but if there’s no pickle and mustard hot-pressed with the bread, Swiss and pork, you don’t have a Cubano, you have a croque-monsieur. A Reuben earns its moniker with the presence of sauerkraut and corned beef. Anything less is merely a loose-meat stack. A po’ boy needs crunch and fried seafood, period.

So what makes for a distinctive sandwich experience? A recent run of sandwich outings has reinvigorated my valuation of this familiar meal (so named because in the 18th century the notorious gambler John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, refused to leave the betting table to dine, and requested meat be brought to him between two slices of bread). Here, then — just as National Sandwich Month nears its end — is a brief primer of some of the best, most specific sammies around right now.

Homerun: Ngon perfects the authentic banh mi for Texas palates 
In an early episode of The Simpsons, Homer laments his limited sandwich choices in Springfield: “I’m sick of eating hoagies. I want a grinder, a sub, a foot-long hero! I want to live, Marge!” Homer was waaayyy off. If that episode had aired within the last decade or so, he would definitely have wanted to include a banh mi in his litany. The classic Vietnam snack — around since the 19th century following the French colonization of Indochina — became a staple in its homeland more than a century ago, but lingered on the fringes of “ethnic goods” in the U.S. from the mid-1970s until about 2009. That’s about when food trucks and specialty shops, buoyed by the prevalence of idiosyncratic culinary options (Korean tacos! Vegan wraps! CBD-infused smoothies!), began to spread the word about this seemingly simple sammie: a baguette, braced with meats and veggies.

Seems basic. So what makes a banh mi a banh mi and not, say, a French dip sans jus, or a stubby lobster roll?

I have come to believe that a true banh mi owes its life to three things that accompany the base of French bread: pickled vegetables, a savory-sweet emulsion and pate de foie gras. I came to that conclusion after I enjoyed that style of banh mi (several, actually) at Ngon, a new Vietnamese restaurant that just soft-opened on Lowest Greenville. (Its grand opening is set for the next week or two.) I’d had my share of Americanized banh mi before, but none seduced me as winningly as the ones here.

The pickled veggies are a no-brainer — if you drew a picture of a generic banh mi, chances are it would be topped with carrots, cabbage and cilantro. The emulsion at Ngon is a housemade butter-mayonnaise; some places use regular mayo, which is fine, though a step down in terms of texture, complexity and sophistication. The butter here is rich and viscous; every bite left a little on my fingers, and I’m not complaining about having to lick it off.

This last ingredient may be one to put off diners, but I am convinced it’s the key: A shmear of cognac-infused pate bivouacs on the opposite side from the butter, slathered onto the inner cradle of the bread, a kind of palisade girding the other components from being subsumed by the airy but carbo-dominance of the baguette. Its creamy tang conspires with the butter to balance each bite, sandwiching (literally) the meat and veggies between creamy phalanxes of hearty versatility. In the past, I’ve often eaten a banh mi like a girthy, unwieldy taco, something to be forced into my mouth in a few morsels. Often, the bread is crusty and dense, giving heft and structure at the expense of subtlety and, frankly, elegance. The banh mis at Ngon were eye-opening on that score.

Partly that’s due to the meats. Ngon only offers chicken and pork protein options right now, but the styles are satisfyingly unusual. The vegetarian option presumably omits the pate and possibly the foie gras. I began to ask how they make it, but I demurred. Best to linger in happy ignorance, imagining a world where pate lives in harmony with wokeness, as sweet as butter and a lush baguette. The alternative is a sad realization of incompleteness, one likely to make me declare “D’oh!”
Also to get while there: A Vietnamese egg coffee.

Netflix and chile: The luscious Hatchback at Liberty Burger
Clearly a burger is also a sandwich — perhaps even the apotheosis of the phylum “sandwich” — and yet people have argued the point with me: No, it’s a burger, as if that changes its essential character. I think some people just don’t like to think of themselves as “sandwich people” (with the implied suburban domesticity, or perhaps the infantilizing childhood connotations) but burger men. No matter; they are wrong.

Better men than I (well, not better, just more obsessive) have chronicled their perceived taxonomy of “the best burgers in town,” which I shan’t dispute or try to counter. I will only note that great burgers can be like comets — appearing in the sky for too-brief a period of time, dazzling us with their brightness then fading until they reappear just when we need them. Such is the Hatchback from Liberty Burger.

What makes it unique — and temporary — is the availability of Hatch chiles from New Mexico. These historic peppers are known for their mild, earthy flavor as well as their versatility in preparation… as well as their truncated growing season (usually just August and September; the town of Hatch has a festival every Labor Day). Liberty Burger’s version is always ready to go as soon as the harvest gets underway, and they do it up right: Diced green chiles blended into the ground beef, then more chiles in a salsa topping the burger and sealed with a slap of Emmenthaler and a criss-cross of bacon, plus lettuce, tomato and purple onion. It’s one of the juiciest burgers around, with a rustic but elevated flavor and tons of gooey Swiss binding it all together. You’ve got about a month more to enjoy it, then it’ll be next summer before you get the chance again. Though we’ve all grown accustomed to waiting for good things lately.
Also to get while there: The Saboteur, or one of the other alcohol-infused adult milkshake.

Gee, B.L.T.s worth queueing up for: AvoEatery’s sophisticated club redux meets One90 Meats’ re-ducks
The B.L.T., the avatar of the club sandwich (minus the slices of chicken breast), is perhaps the most traditional of American sammies. It’s also among the least interesting. I can barely imagine a B.L.T. and not envision sun-cracked women in tennis skirts and portly men in golf shorts ordering one with a martini and hint of racism. Picture it in your head: High but narrow triangles of toasted Wonder Bread, pre-cut and served with a limp pickle and friseed toothpick struggling to keep it from toppling before it gets to the table.

Yeah, well, the B.L.A.T. doesn’t look remotely like that. Or taste like it.

As you might well imagine, the one constant among the options at AvoEatery in Trinity Groves is the creamy, rich appeal of the alligator pear, aka a Mexican avocado: Its flesh is mashed, sliced, fanned or otherwise incorporated into every dish on the menu, as well as many cocktails. But the one iteration that sold me the most was the B.L.A.T. (guess what the A stands for?).

Wide, buttered slices of Signature Bakery bread are grilled and left intact before being layered with lettuce and tomato, then tons of crisp bacon strips, two fried eggs and half an avocado, completed by a spread of avo-aioli. It’s a savory, gooey feast — a B.L.T. in components but not execution. There’s the ooze from the yolk, the crunch from the bacon, the cool dance of the avocado evening out all the components. It makes you rethink all those lunches Mom made you sit through silently with her bridge partners, and how maybe they would have played less if they had this on their plates.
Also to get while there: Avocado toast, natch.

Compare, though, AvoEatery’s variation to the D.L.T. from One90 Smoked Meats: The B gives way to a D, for duck. “It’s a pretty simple sandwich,” says owner Kyle St. Claire, “except you don’t often see duck on a sandwich.” Ya think?
Smoked with a mix of local pecan and oak, the thick breast of a well-fed mallard is sliced with a cap of fat in each edge, giving it a bacon-like quality, though it’s layered more like a cheesesteak on thin slices of rustic bread (plus, of course, the L and T). The addition of a spicy-sweet reduction of cherries and jalapeno soothes it out, for one of the most unusual B.L.T.s you’ll find.
Also to get while there: Smoked brisket.

Full house: Meddlesome Moth’s gastropub twist on a staple deli sammich 
Speaking of sandwich styles that go underappreciated in carb-conscious America, the one I kept thinking of when I was presented with the One-Eyed Jack from Meddlesome Moth is the Dagwood — a sammie known not so much for its ingredients, but for its size. It’s not that the Jack is all that tall, though I did take half of it home with me to eat later; it’s that it packs so much between its slices of bread that it feels like one of those vertical, gravity-defying lunches from a cartoon.

Like the banh mi, it’s a pork-lover’s fantasia: a crisp plank of thick bacon crosses the bread diagonally, a sort of introduction to the flavorful duroc ham layered underneath. The ham is buffeted by a stratum of Tillamook cheddar, thick and cheesy and uniting the components. Adding an air of croque-madame to the mix, a fried egg is embedded in the upper piece of bread. The entire enterprise perches atop a nest of french fries, which I enjoyed but are supporting players to the pigalicious proteins that crowns it. Dagwood — and Homer — would be proud.
Also to get while there: Spicy duck wings.  

Ngon Vietnamese Kitchen, 1907 Greenville Ave. NgonKitchen.com.
Liberty Burger, 1904 Abrams Parkway and other locations. GiveMeLibertyBurger.com.
AvoEatery at Trinity Groves, 3011 Gulden Lane, ste. 116. AvoEatery.com.
One90 Smoked Meats, 10240 Northwest Highway. One90SmokedMeats.com.
Meddlesome Moth, 1621 Oak Lawn Ave. MothInThe.net.