Confession time: For more years than I’d care to admit, I was something of a sandwich cynic. Sure, I thought, there were a couple of good ones out there, but I associated them more with a hasty outdoor meal than a food worth savoring. The truth was, I just hadn’t ever had an exceptional sandwich. Imagine my surprise when, after years of believing I had all the facts, a single bite of a turkey showstopper showed me how wrong I’d been.
Today, I’m a staunch believer in the well-made sando. Sandwiches, to me, are a high-wire culinary art. That is to say, the bad ones are bad, and the good ones are transcendent. Luckily for us all, in recent years, more and more creatives have applied their prodigious talents to the humble sandwich, elevating this lunchtime fare to its rightful heights.
Tucked just south of Portland’s Ladd’s Addition, the Baker’s Mark is doing just that.
It just so happens that the life-changing turkey sandwich I had was served on Dutch crunch bread, a delightfully chewy loaf covered in something like a savory, rice-based craquelin. Though it’s similar to a bread baked in the Netherlands called tijgerbrood, or “tiger bread,” Dutch crunch, as we know it in the U.S., hails from California’s Bay Area, where it’s a staple in delis throughout cities like San Francisco…