Ask longtime Tacomans where to find the best sandwiches and answers will probably circle around the same handful of places. I won’t name names, but some of the frequently cited seem to be rooted in a common and completely understandable combination of nostalgia and convenience with a dose of blind loyalty. After several years of eating sandwiches in this city, I’m going to write what I’ve divulged to others privately: Tacoma needed some fresh sandwich energy.
Sandwiches are everywhere in Tacoma and the surrounding area, but too many are just the thing you get at the place you go. They don’t burrow into the irreversible corners of your mind, emerging every few weeks as a craving that must be satisfied at all costs.
The sandwiches that have broken the mold are all downtown, within a mile of one another along Pacific Avenue and just across the Bridge of Glass off Dock Street. These are sandwiches that fulfill your carb-acious needs from morning to noon and (early) night. Where others buy, they make: flaky biscuits that fit in the hand and don’t fall apart, pickled things and pestos, slow-roasted meats and chicken liver mousse…