Hamburger
Press ground beef onto a screaming flat-top and the hamburger is mostly decided before a topping is reached for. The sear is not a step in the build, it is the build.
Editor's Picks
Fried Chicken Sandwich
A genre, not a recipe: a brined, breaded, craggy-fried fillet closed in a soft bun with flat dill pickle and a sauce kept off the crust. The build two chains went to public war over.
Fried Chicken Biscuit
A fried fillet inside a warm, flaky buttermilk biscuit, codified into a category by Bojangles' and the biscuit-chain South. The Southern breakfast handheld that sat out the chicken-sandwich wars.
French Dip
Look past the beef to the small cup beside it; that cup is the sandwich. Thin roast beef on a French roll, jus served separate, so the eater controls the moisture one dunk at a time.
French Dip with Cheese
A slice of Swiss between beef and roll turns the dunk into two surfaces against the same jus: dunked bottom, sealed top, dial moved but still alive. At Philippe's it adds seventy-five cents.
Fluffernutter
Peanut butter on one slice, marshmallow creme on the other, pressed shut. The peanut butter waterproofs the crumb against the sweet Fluff; the result is soft on soft and tips clean over into dessert.
Fluffernutter
The fluffernutter as the New England regional reading: a Massachusetts statehouse argument, a Lynn-made marshmallow creme, and a school-cafeteria standing the grape-jelly version cannot quite match.
Five Guys Cheeseburger
Five Guys's whole design is the press: two loose balls of chuck squashed thin on a flat-top, a free-toppings list on the wall, peanut oil through every fryer, since 1986 in Arlington.
Filipino Sisig Sandwich
Chopped sizzling pork sisig with calamansi, chili, and a folded egg packed into a pandesal or brioche bun; a Filipino-American diaspora sandwich of Aling Lucing's 1974 Pampanga dish.
Egg Bagel Sandwich
Two scrambled or fried eggs and a slice of American cheese folded onto a toasted, faintly sweet egg bagel and wrapped in foil. The New York City corner-deli morning counter's standing call.
Double-Double
Two thin patties, two slices of American, hand-leafed iceberg on a 3.5-inch toasted bun. Harry and Esther Snyder put the first In-N-Out drive-through in Baldwin Park, California in 1948.
Cuban Sandwich (Tampa)
The Tampa Cuban presses four meats onto a lard-enriched loaf: roast pork, boiled ham, Genoa salami, Swiss. The salami is the marker that separates it from Miami's three-meat build.
Cuban Sandwich (Miami)
Order a Cuban at a Miami ventanita and the cook leans on the plancha until the sandwich loses half its height. That flattening is the recipe, and the city's marker is what it leaves out.
Crispy Fish Sandwich
A breaded white fish fillet on a steamed bun with cold tartar and a half-slice of American cheese. Lou Groen invented the Filet-O-Fish for Catholic Cincinnati in 1962.
Cornell Chicken Sandwich
Charcoal-grilled split chicken in a vinegar, oil, and egg baste from a 1946 Cornell recipe, pulled off the bone onto a soft white bun. Upstate New York firehall and county-fair food.
Coddies
A fried cake of salt cod and mashed potato pressed between two saltine crackers with a stripe of yellow mustard. Faidley's Seafood has been serving it in Baltimore's Lexington Market since 1886.
Chopped Sandwich (TikTok)
A built sub taken apart on a board, chopped fine, scooped back into a roll. The 19 March 2023 TikTok from @big_erics_bbq fixed a technique the deli counter has always had.
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.
Chopped Cheese with Hot Peppers
The chopped cheese is built with a spatula, not a press: ground chuck chopped flat on a Harlem bodega flat-top, American slices folded through, hot peppers chopped in or piled cold.
Chopped Brisket
Smoked Texas brisket chopped on a butcher block with the bark worked through the pile, dressed with a thin tangy sauce, on a soft white bun with pickle and raw onion.
Chimichanga
The fryer makes the sandwich. A burrito sealed shut and dropped into hot oil stops being a soft package and becomes a rigid blistered shell that asks for cold smother on top to balance.
Buffalo Chicken Finger Sub
Fried strips tossed in the cayenne-and-butter emulsion of the Buffalo wing, laid end-to-end down a sub roll with blue cheese on the bread; a Western New York pizzeria specialty.
BLT
Cut a ripe tomato and time it; within minutes it runs. The BLT is built against that clock, four parts with nothing to hide behind, best the instant it is made and declining from there.
Arby's Classic Roast Beef
Slow-roasted round shaved off a slicer onto a small sesame-onion bun, dressed only with Arby's Sauce and Horsey Sauce. The Raffel brothers' founding menu item, on every counter since 1964.