The Sandwich Poitevin is a place-named sandwich that draws on the Poitou cheese rack, and in this register the defining element is Chabichou. Chabichou du Poitou is a soft goat's-milk cheese made in a small, slightly tapered cylinder, aged until the rind sets and the paste runs from creamy to firm and nutty depending on how long it has had. The build is a split crusted loaf, a thin spread of butter or none, and the cheese cut into rounds or crushed across the crumb, with a sweet or green note alongside and little else. The region is Poitou.
The logic follows from Chabichou being a small, distinctly goaty cheese with real backbone. Young, it is creamy and gently lactic; left longer it tightens and the goat character sharpens and turns nutty, and the sandwich shifts with the age of the round. The cheese gives the bite a clean, tangy spine rather than a heavy melt, so the build answers the acidity instead of smothering it: a thin run of honey, a fig, or a few walnuts bridges the tang to the wheat and softens the edge without burying the cheese. Butter stays thin or is skipped, because the point is to taste the Chabichou and extra fat blunts it. The bread wants a firm crust and a crumb tight enough to hold a soft, slightly moist cheese without going slack underneath it. It is best within a few minutes of assembly, before the cheese weeps into the crumb and the crust softens, and it benefits from the round resting briefly at room temperature so the paste loosens and the flavor opens.
Variations move along the Poitou shelf rather than off it. A fresh cylinder gives a creamy, gentle sandwich; an aged one gives a firm, assertive one; toasting the bread under the cheese turns the paste molten and edges it toward a tartine. The region also runs a savory green-terrine sandwich on a different track entirely, the bound-greens Sandwich Farci Poitevin, which is its own preparation rather than a variation of this one. The Sandwich Poitevin belongs with the place-named sandwiches the catalog groups under Regional Specialty Sandwiches. Its specific contribution is the Poitou goat-cheese register: a small, tapered Chabichou whose tang is the structure the sandwich is built to frame.