Sandwich Brasserie

A waiter at a brasserie zinc cuts a baguette in half across, runs the knife along it lengthwise, and butters both faces to the edges before any filling goes near the bread. That sequence repeats a few hundred times a week behind the bar of a busy house, and that routine runs the sandwich section of a brasserie menu: a short list, usually four to six lines, printed under or beside the plats du jour. Jambon de Paris sits in sheets of pale pink, a firm cheese comes in a wedge that the cook slices to order, and a hard-boiled egg is cut into rounds that show their yellow centres at the edge of the crumb. The order goes to the counter rather than the stove, which is why a sandwich can arrive in the middle of service without disturbing the kitchen.

The butter does more work than anyone notices. Spread cold and thin, it tastes of cream in the first bite and then of salt as the ham warms in the hand, and it lays a film across the crumb so that the mustard or the cornichon brine does not soak through in the ten minutes before the plate is cleared. The crust gives a short, dry crack when the sandwich is pressed between the fingers, and shards of it end up on the paper napkin. A cornichon slices into small sour discs that cut through the fat, and a single leaf of lettuce, lifted by a thumbnail at the edge, is there mostly for its cold snap. A sandwich left sitting on a pass for twenty minutes goes limp at the base and loses the crack; the brasserie assembles it when the order lands.

Some brasseries stretch the list well past ham and cheese. A pâté de campagne with cornichons suits the glass of red at the next table, rillettes spread thick suit the late-afternoon beer, and smoked salmon with a squeeze of lemon turns up where the oyster stall stands outside. Each is built on the same split baguette and the same layer of butter, so the choice of line comes down to what the kitchen has on the cold counter that day. A regular orders by the filling and the drink together, a jambon-beurre and a demi, and the waiter writes the pair as one ticket. The same sandwich can pass for lunch at one o'clock or as the thing a brasserie will still serve at four, when the dining room is stacking chairs and the kitchen has gone quiet.

Eating one is a counter habit as much as a table one. The sandwich arrives on a small plate or a square of paper, cut on the diagonal so the layers show, and it is picked up with both hands because a split baguette this long shifts as soon as it is lifted. The first bite is cold ham and cool butter against a warm crust, and the beer beside it cuts the salt. A pot of mustard sits within reach, and so do the cornichons in their jar, handed over by whoever is behind the bar. Plenty of Parisians eat it standing at the zinc between two errands, and the bill is paid at the till on the way out, which is the quickest service a brasserie offers.

That all-day availability comes from the room's origins. A brasserie takes its name from the French word for brewery, and the first ones in Paris poured beer with food that needed no waiting: sausage, choucroute, bread and cold cuts. Frédéric Bofinger, an Alsatian from Colmar, is credited with opening his brasserie on the rue de la Bastille in 1864, though sources differ on whether it was the first in Paris to serve beer on tap. After the war of 1870 and the German annexation of Alsace, Alsatian families and brewers moved to the capital in numbers, and the beer hall with a long menu became a fixture of the boulevards. A sandwich fits that tradition: it takes a minute to plate and sits well beside a tall glass of cold lager.

Origin and history

Brasserie Lipp, at 151 boulevard Saint-Germain, opened on 27 October 1880 under Léonard Lipp and his wife Pétronille, who had left Alsace after its annexation by Germany. No record names the first brasserie to put jambon on buttered baguette on a printed menu, and the format looks to have grown out of daily practice at the bar before it reached the carte.

The sandwich itself was already a Parisian habit by then. Market workers at Les Halles ate bread with ham or pork fat through the nineteenth century, and the pale pink jambon de Paris that later filled the brasserie baguette took that name from the capital. In the years between the wars the café and brasserie counters absorbed the lunch crowd that did not want a full plat, and the sandwich section became a standard block on the menu. The year a given house first printed its sandwich line is rarely documented.

The best-documented thing about a house like Lipp is what it sold on day one: a cervelat rémoulade to start, choucroute garnie, and good beer, at modest prices. Cold sausage with a sharp sauce and bread is bar food that needs no cooking, and it sits on the same cold counter that supplies the ham, pâté and cornichons of the sandwich line today.