The Sandwich Rillauds d'Anjou is built around chunks of pork rather than a slice or a spread, and that physical form decides how it behaves. Rillauds are pieces of pork belly from Anjou, cut into rough cubes, salted, and cooked slowly in their own fat until the lean sets firm and the fat goes meltingly soft, leaving knuckles of meat with a burnished, faintly caramelized exterior. They are not a paste and not shingled charcuterie: they are nuggets, eaten more or less whole, packed into a split crusted loaf or a length of baguette with little else so the confit pork is what you taste.
The logic follows from the shape and the fat. Because rillauds are chunks, the sandwich has a coarse, uneven bite: pockets of soft fat, knots of firm meat, the crisp browned edge of each piece, none of it uniform the way a spread or a slice is. That texture is the point, and it sets the constraints. The pieces are rich and salty from the cure, so the build stays spare and the counterweight stays sharp, a few cornichons or a stripe of strong mustard cutting the fat the way they do on a charcuterie board. The chunks do not bind the loaf the way a spread does, so the bread has to have a real crust to hold its shape around a filling that sits in loose pieces rather than pressing into the crumb. Rillauds eat best gently warmed, where the fat loosens and the meat stays moist; cold, the fat sets hard and the pieces tighten and turn waxy.
Variations stay on the Angevin pork shelf rather than leaving it. The plainest is rillauds and bread with a single sharp note; some add a leaf of frisée for a green cut against the fat; a smear of rillettes de Tours worked in beneath the chunks gives a spreadable base under the whole pieces, two textures of the same animal in one loaf. Each holds the cubed confit pork as the fixed point and changes only what sharpens or steadies it. The Sandwich Rillauds d'Anjou belongs with the cured-meat sandwiches the catalog groups under Sandwich Saucisson & Charcuterie, the tradition that runs across France's regional curing shelves. Its specific contribution is confit pork served in chunks rather than as a spread, so the bite is coarse and uneven and the sandwich's job is to hold the pieces and stay out of their way.