Samak Makli (سمك مقلي) is fried fish folded into bread, small whole fish or fillets dredged and crisped, then tucked into khubz with a sharp sauce and something acidic to cut the oil. The angle is the fish and the fry. This is a coastal sandwich built on the simplest move in the Lebanese fish kitchen, which is to flour a fish, take it through hot oil until the skin shatters, and serve it hot before the crust softens. The sandwich works as a way to carry that fry without losing it, so everything around the fish exists to keep the crispness alive and to balance the fat. Get it right and the bite is a clean snap of crust against soft flaked flesh, lifted by acid and garlic. Get it wrong and it is greasy, the crust gone limp inside the bread, the fish either dry from overcooking or muddy from oil that was not hot enough.
The build is fish first, sandwich second. Small fish such as whitebait or sardines are floured and fried whole, or a firmer white fish is cut into fingers, dusted in seasoned flour or a fine semolina coat, and dropped into oil that has to be properly hot so the crust forms fast and the flesh steams inside rather than absorbing fat. The fried fish is drained well and, if whole and small, often eaten bones and all. It goes into khubz or a split pita with the things that define a Lebanese fish plate brought into sandwich form: tarator, the tahini-and-lemon sauce loosened with garlic, or a fierce toum, plus pickles, raw onion, parsley, sometimes a few slices of tomato and a squeeze of lemon over the top. A good samak makli sandwich keeps the fish hot and crisp against a cool sharp sauce, the bread fresh enough to fold without splitting, and enough acid that the oil never sits heavy. A sloppy one is a soft soggy package where the fry collapsed, the sauce drowned the crust, or the fish was fried tired and tastes of nothing but old oil.
It shifts mostly by the fish and the sauce rather than by bulk. A whitebait version is many tiny crisp fish packed in, eaten in salty mouthfuls; a fillet version is meatier and cleaner, closer to a fish finger sandwich with a Lebanese accent. The sauce is the other axis: tahini tarator reads nutty and round against the fry, while raw garlic toum reads sharp and hot. Some builds work in a spiced flour with cumin and chili for a Levantine fried-fish character; some add a pickled-vegetable load or a chopped salad for crunch and freshness. The grilled version, where the fish is cooked over fire instead of in oil, is a distinct sandwich with its own balance and stands as its own article rather than a footnote here. What this one reliably delivers is a crisp hot fry carried in bread, judged on whether the crust survived the fold and the acid kept the oil in check.