A sandwich at Ashby Eatery, a sandwich shop in Berkeley, California.
out of 100 · legendary
Legendary. Every gate clear, the board clean.
Reads as a fully realized lox bagel, five of six roles on the board.
More acid than 90% of the catalog.
Each bar is one pillar of the score, 0 to 100. The tick marks what a sandwich at the summit needs; an amber bar is the one holding this sandwich back.
seeded sourdough toast, toasted: smoked lox; charred scallion cream cheese; pickled red onion; dill; crispy capers.
Balance
| Axis | Value | Catalog percentile |
|---|---|---|
| salt | 1.4 | 70th |
| acid | 1.9 | 90th |
| fat | 1.4 | 23rd |
| sweet | 0.2 | 28th |
| umami | 1.0 | 30th |
| heat | 0.0 | n/a |
| bitter | 0.3 | 75th |
90 Balance, out of 100
The seven flavor axes of the whole sandwich, each summed across its layers. The shaded ring is the catalog's middle 80%; the small number under each axis is where this sandwich falls in the catalog. A shape that sits inside the ring is in the range most sandwiches live in; a spike past it is where this one stands apart.
What each layer brings
| Layer | Role | Flavor and texture | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| seeded sourdough toastscored as Sourdough | bread | soft chewy crusty | the frame |
| smoked loxscored as Salmon | protein | fat 3 umami 3 soft flaky tender | +31 |
| charred scallion cream cheesescored as Cream Cheese | fat | fat 4 creamy silky smooth | +19 |
| pickled red onionscored as Pickled Onion | acid | acid 4 pickled wet crunchy | +1 |
| dill | aromatic | fresh herbal soft | +8 |
| crispy capersscored as Caper | acid | salt 4 acid 4 brined pickled wet | +3 |
Points: what the Sandwich Score would lose if that one layer were left out, everything else the same. A negative number means the sandwich scores higher without it. Flavor runs 0 to 5 on each axis.
Pairings
- Salmon + Cream Cheese: lox logic: rich fish on a cool schmear
- Salmon + Pickled Onion: raw onion bite keeps rich lox honest
- Salmon + Dill: dill is cured salmon's house herb
- Salmon + Caper: briny pop against rich cured fish
All the sandwiches at Ashby Eatery · The menu this was read from · Build your own in the Sandwich Builder