There’s no more perfect meal than the sandwich.
Forget its English roots: the sandwich is as American as apple pie, baseball and gerrymandering.
Best enjoyed outside (fingers crossed) with a tall, cool beverage of your choosing.
And so we present the expertly curated, highly subjective InsideHook SF Book of Sandwich, Vol. 2, cataloguing all the best sandwiches in one local neighborhood.
Today: SoMa.
From the same rye-loving team as Deli Board. These are the sandwiches we love here, in order: the Ted and the Trevor (both eschewing turkey, elevating Swiss), the Chicago-style dog and then the Hollywood Herm. But we’d eat anything on the menu, including the lox bagel with pickled onion and cream cheese.
Where do you start? Where do you end? Like its sibling Rye Project, it’s all delicious. We’re calling this a tie, because as much as we love a pastrami-centric situation (see: the Carzle, with Romanian pastrami, brisket, provolone, cherry peppers and pickles on a garlic French roll), there’s something about the custom deal with egg salad we find basically perfect. Order ahead or suffer the line.
Trust a Baltimore native (like chef Liza Shaw) to make good on an East Coast-style sub (or hoagie, if you will). That said: We grew up with Italian Combos (mortadella, salami, provolone, shredded lettuce) and cheesesteaks (here with sharp provolone and grilled onions), but we come for the — well, those two, in that order — but also the Baccala, with salt cod fritters, shaved fennel, green olives and marinara.
While overstuffed is the M.O. for many of our favorite shops, Darwin brings a little something different to the table, with a selection of baguettes laden (elegantly) with things we like very, very much, including fresh mozz and pesto and Nutella and mascarpone. (And ham with Gruyère.) Our favorite, though: the house-cured wild salmon lox with fromage blanc .. unless you want the Italian-themed sandwich with mortadella, salami, coppa, arugula, sweet onion and pickles.
American Grilled Cheese Kitchen
Your correspondent lived a block off of South Park before the arrival of American Grilled Cheese Kitchen, which is sad for her metaphorical heart and a boon of monumental proportions for her literal one, since she would have eaten nothing but the Jalapeo Popper (bacon, chèvre, Monterey jack and apricot-jalapeño relish) and Reuben Adams (Jarlsberg + pastrami) for the totality of her tenancy. Of the various hunger pangs experienced while writing this text, these hit the hardest.
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