Western/Denver Sandwich
The Western, or Denver, is an omelet built to behave like a filling: ham, onion, and green pepper bound in a set egg slab on dry white toast. Its name is older than every restaurateur who claimed it.
The American Lunch-Counter Classics
Turkey Sandwich
Sliced turkey breast, lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise on soft bread: the standing American lunch order. The meat comes off a brined cylinder, and its everydayness took an industry decades to build.
Tuna Salad Sandwich
Canned albacore comes out of the tin pale, cooked, and dry; the mixing bowl puts it back together, mayonnaise for the moisture it lost, celery for the crunch it never had.
Tongue Sandwich
Beef tongue, brined like corned beef and simmered soft, sliced thin on seeded rye with mustard: the smoothest, mildest meat the old Ashkenazi deli counter serves.
Tomato Sandwich
A thick homegrown beefsteak, salt, pepper, and a heavy smear of Duke's on cheap soft white bread, eaten over the sink for the few summer weeks a Southern garden tomato is at full sugar.
The Moistmaker
The three-slice Thanksgiving leftover sandwich with a gravy-soaked center slice. Named by Ross Geller on Friends in The One With Ross's Sandwich, December 1998.
Thanksgiving Sandwich
Turkey roasted to be carved, stuffing baked to be spooned, gravy meant to be ladled: the Thanksgiving sandwich forces four cutlery foods into a shape a hand can close around, the morning after.
Sloppy Joe
Loose, sweet-tangy tomato beef on a soft bun, eaten over a plate with a fork as often as a hand. The American cafeteria default that a 1969 can turned into a national staple.
Sloppy Joe (NJ Style)
A cold knife-cut triple-decker: two meats, Swiss, drained coleslaw, Russian dressing, layered on three shaved sheets of Pullman rye. Born at Town Hall Deli, South Orange, in 1936.
Pimento Cheese Sandwich
The pimento cheese sandwich stakes everything on a three-ingredient spread: sharp cheddar, mayonnaise, sweet pimientos on soft white bread. It has nowhere to hide, which is the whole point.
Ham and Pimiento Cheese
Salt-cured country ham shaved thin under a Southern lunch counter's pimiento cheese: the tangy cheddar-and-mayonnaise spread answered by a low cured funk, cold off the tray.
Ham and Cheese
Two cured things that hold each other up: salted ham and aged cheddar on buttered white. The British plain ham and cheese is the ploughman's folded shut and the meal deal's quiet baseline.
Egg Salad Sandwich
Get the ratio of mayonnaise to egg wrong and it is dry crumble or wet paste, with nothing to cover for it. Chopped egg, mayo, salt, soft bread: the floor of the sandwich, and the floor is the point.
Duke's Mayo Tomato Sandwich
Tomato sandwich specifically made with Duke's mayonnaise.
Chopped Liver Sandwich
Sauteed chicken livers hand-chopped with onion and hard-boiled egg, bound with schmaltz on Jewish rye: a kosher deli spread engineered by the absence of butter.
Chicken Salad Sandwich
The mayo-bound salad whose filling is genuinely cooked and seasoned to a cook's signature: pulled chicken, celery, often grapes and pecans. A Southern point of pride, grapes-or-no-grapes the argument.