Have we had our fill of designer sandwiches?
The humble butty has come a long way since the 4th Earl of Sandwich hankered after a snack between two slices of bread. These days he’d be pointed in the direction of a supermarket chiller cabinet and offered pre-wrapped delicacies such as Aromatic Duck or Thai Green Curry in a choice of rolls, baguettes, pitta, bloomers, wraps and bagels. But are these new fangled sandwiches with their exotic ingredients more enticing than a good old-fashioned cheese and pickle sarnie? We decided to find out.
The sandwich explosion
Sandwiches may have been around for centuries, but they’re perfectly geared towards our busy modern life. You can’t multi-task with a plate of chicken salad perched precariously on your lap – but stick it in a sandwich and away you go.
Quick and easy to make, they are the ultimate convenience food. The irony is, we’re often too busy to make them ourselves – that’s why the ready-made sandwich market is worth 3.3 billion pounds.
And because we’re chomping our way through so many sandwiches, we’re demanding more choice, so it’s no surprise that, as tastes change, more and more unusual ingredients are sneaking in between the slices.
Anyone for a bacon and scallop bap?
A couple of years ago we’d have thought ‘Foccacia’ was a rude word. But now we’re quite happy to swap our white sliced for a nice bit of Italian bread, laced with black olives.
And if you thought crayfish and rocket was a little bit ‘out there’, the sandwiches of the future could go absurdly gastronomic. We could find ourselves tucking into bacon and scallop sandwiches, roast pork with peaches, houmous and date, fig and Parma Ham even char-grilled pineapple.
But shouldn’t these fillings stay in the restaurant and out of the sandwich shop? Wouldn’t a delicate Thai Curry fair better on a bed of Jasmine Rice than be crowbarred into a Ciabatta? Surely these fillings are too fussy to be sandwich fare - as anyone who has eaten a leaky Tikka wrap on a bus will tell you.
