A sandwich revolution and Canada
The humble sandwich is having a revolution in London, but Carys Sharkey takes a tour of the City to see if bigger is always better
In the City, queues spill out of sandwich shop doors as the rigmarole of work is punctured by bread and spread. But the sandwich is no longer a humble thing. The days of hard butter and thick ham have dislodged themselves from the roof of your mouth. Sandwiches, unless you haven’t noticed, are now towering, irreverent, boyish things.The sandwich is online, where it is squeezed and garroted into incomprehension for likes. Sandwiches are no longer named after their constituent parts rattled off as a prosaic list, but by inside-jokes and code words.
And for the most part that’s okay, because often they taste good too.
Inside the Square Mile, the evolution of lunch is gleaned not only in the queues, but it is worn on the bare walls of dystopian salad ‘projects’ and built into the square footage of the UK’s soon to be biggest sandwich shop. Where the sandwich used to be hailed as a food of convenience, it is now a small midday luxury, stuffed, signed and devoured.
The explosion in popularity of Bristol chain Sandwich Sandwich encapsulates the lunch trend du jour of the City. Here you will find the biggest queues for the biggest sandwiches – and it is telling that their London expansion is being built on a solid Square Mile foothold. The recognisable brand of cross-section devotion lends itself well to the overly saturated world of Instagram and Tiktok.
The whole place feels like it was designed by corporate whizz Willy Wonka – from logo and name to entire concept. Here you will find the gelato-style towers of spreads and fillings that are integral to cementing the bread together and lending its trademark height. Even the sandwiches are like Wonkafied meal deal offerings: southern fried chicken, coronation chicken, hoisin pork. And that soon to be biggest UK sandwich shop? A 3,500sqft Sandwich Sandwich opening near Fenchurch Street later this year.
The founder of Sandwich Sandwich, Nick Kleiner, is set to speak at the Food to Go Conference next week on his chain’s moment in the zeitgeist of sarnies. He is part of a panel discussing ‘The premiumisation of lunch’, or perhaps ‘why people will pay more for better tasting food’. A teaser for the panel reads: “With office workers concentrating their lunchtime spend mid-week, average spend per transaction has been increasing, as customers turn their backs on bland salads and sandwiches in favour of premium, freshly-made, bowls and baps.”
And all credit to Sandwich Sandwich – they have turned a string of Bristol delis into a phenomenon, with decent, if somewhat cloying, sandwiches and an ambitious plan for UK domination. The family-run operation has said in interviews that it is targeting the likes of Subway, with a branch on every corner as the ultimate goal.
It’s a noble pursuit, a dough-slinging David and Goliath, but what about the independent sandwich shops in the City that have been quietly stuffing a dedicated following of bankers and insurers and construction workers? How will the sandwich sell itself in a time of so-called premiumisation?
City titans: Porterford and Dilieto
Obviously, there are the heavy hitters, or the City grandees of filled bread that are never without a queue. At Porterford Butchers, the aim of the game is to proselytise with protein. This place knows that regardless of salary, workers in the City are fanatical about value, and nowhere do you get more meat for your buck than Porterford . From the comforting gum of Philly cheese-steak to the sinuous, knotty meat pressed into charred caramel sweetness in the mint lamb baguette; Porterford fat-slicked USP ensures it will always be one of the most popular eateries in the City.
Another City stalwart is Dilieto on Fleet Street. Here ciabatta is king, and the whole place has a 2005 Naked Chef Italian-Anglo vibe of pesto, rocket and sun dried tomatoes. The sandwiches are good, the queue moves quickly and it’s reasonably priced.
Then comes the escalope trifecta: De Livio, Basils and Continental Sandwich Bar. Meat flattened, breaded and fried, is one of the all time great foods, from Austrian schnitzel and Polish kotlety schabowy to Japanese katsu and the Middlesbrough parmo. The City is particularly partial to a chicken escalope sandwich, which appears in greater concentration here than anywhere else in London. But is this classic sandwich under threat from slicker newcomers, or can a loyal following keep it afloat?
Sandwiches by Smithfield
Start in the north. Cafe de Livio is nestled on the road that bends around Smithfield Market. Here, neon-orange construction workers from the Museum of London development zip in and out while lorries and forktrucks shunt carcasses and offal in the cold winter sun. In the morning, men sit over sausages, eggs and tea, but the real trade is at lunch, and the real star is the escalope. The cafe, undoubtedly one of the friendliest places in the City, has been run by Roland (“everyone calls me Landy”) and his wife Mary for 15 years. The offerings are Italian inflected but the couple hail from Albania. Indeed, they both look bemused when I ask if there is an appetite for Albanian food here. “It’s different”, Landy answers diplomatically.
Landy works the sandwich bar with reflexive ease while Mary mans the mayonnaise, bagging and payment section. As breakfast slopes into midday, the office and construction workers begin shuffling in and Landy goes from stirring baked beans to scooping up pesto. He collapses the continent with the flick of a wrist.
Mary and Landy tell me they have been mostly unaffected by changes in the City. Neither giant sandwiches nor hybrid working seem to bother them much. Here it’s all about the regulars, Landy tells me. He then gestures to a man in the corner getting up to pay: “Johnny is one of the first customers”.
Johnny, who has been listening to our conversation, replies: “I have been coming here for 15 years and only just learnt his name is Roland. Nice to meet you, Roland”. The men laugh and shake hands with mock-reverence before Johnny slips out into the bitingly cold day.
Before I head out too – escalope in-hand, which are deliciously hard-backed here after a blast under the plancha – I ask the couple if they are optimistic about the future. Mary, the calm foil to her husband’s effervescence, shrugs a little doubtfully. Landy on the other hand looks incredulous I even asked:
“Of course, why not?”
Watling Street nostalgia
Walk down from Smithfield and onto Watling Street to arrive at Continental Sandwich Bar, licked by the shadow of St Paul’s and dwarfed by the queue of Porterford opposite. This is the second stop for an escalope.
There is something nostalgic about this place and its fridge-cold Yorkie bars, haphazardly stacked boxes of crisps and constantly blasting radio. I have come to quite enjoy hearing LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem at 9am while I wait for a bacon sandwich. I also like staring at the piles of sandwich spreads studded with bacon that look like prehistoric burial mounds, or the thin escalopes piled and overlapping like sheets in a tannery.
Murat Buyukbay, who has worked at the place since the 1990s, strikes a more pessimistic tone about the demise of the sandwich bar. He recalls how there used to be “hundreds” of independent spots that have now closed as chain lunches and the meal deal rule supreme. He explains how this has had a knock-on effect on his supply chain, from the “eggman” to the “breadman” going out of business. The more recent ebbs and flows of City life are also noted. He says Fridays, which used to be the “day of bacon, sausage and egg” (a hangover-coded order if ever there was one), are now the quietest day of the week.
Unchanged, however, is the enduring popularity of the escalope; so too is the stream of regulars who pour in, unwilling, perhaps, to stand in the queue opposite.
New meets old at Fenchurch Street
So onto the final stop and back to the beginning. Just down from what will soon be the UK’s biggest sandwich shop, is the blunt, brown welcome of Basils near Fenchurch Street. And I think this is the best escalope in the City.
Here are the hallmarks of a good sandwich: chewy light roll, fat-crumbed breading and enough mayo pooling in the corners. There is also an eclectic side to the menu that I have tended, perhaps to my detriment, to avoid (see highland special, pate special, creole special). Crucially, Basils understands what the majority of City spots do not: Air is the backbone of a good sandwich. Oh, and they leave out a communal bowl of garlic bread to snack on while you wait.
As hospitality venues face an existential crisis, it is reassuring to see a dogged devotion to favourite sandwich shops. The choice to queue for 20 minutes flies in the face of pre-packed convenience – and it looks like this sentiment is only getting stronger. Whether you find self-expression in salad or comfort in breaded chicken, the City has it all. And even as lunch becomes a more premium, more all-singing, all-dancing affair, the same places will continue to sling out the same sandwiches to the same people for many years to come.