24-07-2025
Why Anthony Bourdain Loathed This Iconic American Sandwich
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Most folks have the odd food and drink bugaboo here and there. For some, it's the genetic quirk that makes cilantro taste like soap. Others simply have an antipathy toward olives, anchovies, and other such divisive items. The internationally renowned food world personality and occasional crime novelist Anthony Bourdain was particularly prickly about the club sandwich, which he compared to the terrorist network Al Qaeda (via the Los Angeles Times) in his 2016 cookbook "Appetites." This relatable bit of vexation was particularly focused on the hotel room service staple's over-reliance on carbohydrates.
"I'm really irritated by that useless middle slice of bread on the club sandwich," Bourdain told the Los Angeles Times on the occasion of "Appetites'" publication. "It's been there forever; it's not a trend. It's lasted for decades and why, when we can so easily dispense with it," he said. Hypotheses abound — maybe it's to fortify the towering sandwich's architecture, maybe it's to make it more sharable, maybe it's merely an aesthetic choice — but we've yet to see a recipe that totally justifies all that extra rye or sourdough. The good news is that you can actually eschew those pesky middle bits. And the club sandwich is even more adaptable from there.
Read more: The Most Iconic Sandwich In Every State
Bourdain Wasn't The Only Chef Who Had A Bone To Pick With Club Sandwiches
Another late culinary icon, James Beard, also hated the "modern" club sandwich. Beard posited in his own 1972 book "James Beard's American Cookery" that the darn middle bread was actually a latter day addition to what had been a much more manageable sandwich. "Nowdays the sandwich is bastardized because it is usually made as a three-decker, which is not authentic," Beard wrote, adding the damning parenthetical, "whoever started that horror should be forced to eat three-deckers three times a day the rest of his life" (via What's Cooking America). Let that serve as the one-two punch of authority to skip the extra bread once and for all.
Once you've gotten your previously Jenga-like sandwiches down to size, you should also feel empowered to build your club with chicken or turkey, (also a matter of much debate) or even use both at the same time. You can likewise make those clubs as hot or cold as you wish. Just make sure to pin them together with those festive, frilly toothpicks. That's one exchange that nobody should have to abide.
Read the original article on Chowhound.
