The Sandwich Complet is defined by its name: complet means complete, and the sandwich earns it by loading everything in at once. The build is a baguette split lengthwise and filled with ham, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise together, a single sandwich that refuses to choose between a meat sandwich, a cheese sandwich, and a salad. What defines it is the totality, the deliberate decision to include the full set rather than edit it down, so the sandwich reads as a whole lunch folded into one crust.
The craft is in keeping a crowded sandwich from collapsing under its own ambition. Five components in one baguette means five textures and two sources of moisture, the tomato and the mayonnaise, so the assembly order matters: the mayonnaise on the crumb, the ham and cheese as the stable core, the lettuce as a barrier between the wet tomato and the bread. The baguette is the right vehicle precisely because its firm crust and chewy crumb can hold a heavy, varied load that would crush a softer loaf. This sets the constraint clearly: the tomato has to be sliced and, ideally, kept off the bare bread, because a complete sandwich fails fastest where the moisture meets the crumb, and the proportions have to stay disciplined, because everything-at-once becomes nothing-in-particular if no component is allowed to lead. The sandwich is best within a few minutes of assembly, while the baguette still has bite and the tomato has not yet wept into the bread. It is a sandwich whose challenge is editing by arrangement rather than by subtraction.
Variations mostly adjust the loadout inside the same complete idea. A version with a richer cured meat runs heavier; a version that adds a hard-boiled egg leans further toward the composed plate; swapping the dressing for a sharper one cuts the fat. The closely related Parisian three-decker takes a similar full set into a stacked format and deserves its own treatment in Club Sandwich Parisien. The Sandwich Complet's contribution to the catalog is the maximalist position: the everything sandwich, defined by inclusion, held together by the baguette and by the order in which it is built.