Let’s talk about Cuban sandwiches. They have two kinds of pig, cheese and pickles. They are universally delicious. They are warm and cool and refreshing, pretty much good any time of year, any time of day. These were my thoughts, so I ordered one “Cuban Mojo” ($8.50). Then my thoughts were, ‘My god, why is this bag so heavy?’ This sandwich is absolutely huge. I could only make it through half and had to save the other half for dinner.

It was delicious. Juicy roasted pork, happily co-mingling with cool sliced ham. The bread was toasted perfectly and provided wonderful crispy resistance, without being too chewy. I could have done with slightly less sliced ham, but in the end, who can complain about slightly too much sliced ham? That’s like being annoyed that you have too many one dollar bills, you just don’t have a valid complaint.

Luscious is delicious; I’ll be back to try the rest of the menu.

Not the most complicated sandwich, but they roast their own pork. That’s worth a strategy bump!

This thing is massive!

They have all different kinds of meatballs (veggie, pork, beef, etc.) and even have rotating daily specials. I tried the spicy pork, on a hero with tomato sauce and provolone cheese for $9. I had really high expectations, after all, with this kind of focus there is no excuse for blandness. The sandwich came out and there were a few things wrong. First, the meatballs are mushy. Tasty enough, but mushy. Every tasty meatball I’ve ever made was fried in oil until crispy. Crispy meatballs are delicious, the crusties keep the texture interesting and away from meatloaf. Apparently, after much research, some people bake them which leaves them mushy. How did they manage to dedicate a whole shop to them and forget to make them crispy? Second, there is hardly any cheese on these (see below)! Why bother letting people order cheese if you’re only going to sprinkle it on? Thirdly, these pork meatballs aren’t spicy at all. Oh, come on!
(Finally, how can they devote a third of their webpage to themselves. You’re very pretty, now get back in the kitchen and give me some damn cheese.)

After a whole hero I was pretty sickly full. I managed to cram down a half an ice cream sandwich ($4), which was pretty delicious. You pick each of the cookie sides and the filling and it comes out pretty much as you’d expect. The cookies were soft and delicious and the ice cream, was, well, ice creamy.

Skip the meatballs and just get a few ice cream sandwiches.

Uninspired Meatball Performance

Meatballs on Hero

3 balls per Hero

Brownie, chocolate chip and espresso filling.

Scoops!

I’m not sure if all Five Guys’ are like this, but the one I went to was an insane assembly line operation that looked something like this: register, deep fryers, grills, salting station, burger assembly, pickup. I ordered and before I could even walk to the other end, I saw my receipt pop up at the assembly station and get prepped. Damn, that’s operational excellence.

Five Guys trumpets the fact that they use peanut oil to fry their fries, as if that makes a difference. They have specialty branded bags of potatoes by the door, all dressed up in white and red corporate. I guess all this helps alleviate the guilt people have when they indulge. Which all seems kind of silly, because the fries are pretty damn good. The burger you ask, the burger! It was good too. One of the other things with five guys is that everyone gets two patties, all the toppings you want, and a huge serving of fries. Yeah, that’s why everyone looks sheepish to mention it, you get calories for the week.

I went a little overboard on the free toppings, stopping just green peppers short of ‘everything’ (they have a cute name for it, but I forget). The cheeseburger I got was an insane monstrosity (look below!). It fell apart while I was eating it. It was also pretty tasty. Totally greasy and a little disgusting, but pretty damn tasty. The jalapenos and swiss I got on mine made it pretty spicy and meaty, just like I love.

Just like they talk up their ‘fresh’ fries, they also talk up their fresh burgers. Sure, you can see them grill the burgers right behind the assembly line, so in that sense they’re fresh. But they still look and mostly taste like regular TGIF-applebees-chillis beef patties. Maybe a smidgen better (or is that how good their marketing is?).

Sure I’d go back eventually, but next time I’d sheepishly test my meal-mates to see if they’re ready for the coma and general kind of nasty feeling you’re left with.

Average ingredients, average strategy: not bad, not great

Presented in dreamy five-guys-o-vision

This piggie’s beef is incredible. Really, fantastic. We’ve covered a few roast beefs in the last few years and while they’ve been tasty, this takes the crown, no questions asked. I had the “That Way” ($8.50) which is roast beef and mozzarella cheese drizzled with gravy on an Italian hero. It’s an incredible amount of beef and it goes down like soup. The beef is so soft and delicious. The worst of roast beef is when they’re stringy, dry and salty. This work of art makes none of these mistakes: the beef is without any stringy fat to catch your bites (it seems shredded), incredibly moist from all the gravy and perfectly seasoned. It’s an incredible punch of savory flavors that you get to taste over and over (Did I mention it’s huge?).

Trust the Piggie, go get some beefy genius.

The menu is simple enough

I was excited and my fingers were shaking. Look how big it is!

Mozzarella

Do you like gravy?

Simple sandwiches with wonderful ingredients:

Outside the beef:

Inside the beef:

I have no idea what the name means. Maybe you’re supposed to stand up when you eat? Why bother with the seats then? Was “Sit” taken? Maybe it’s their screenname and Stand1 through Stand3 were already taken? It feels like they knew they were opening a boring burger joint and tried to spruce it up with a super-modern name.

Cynicism aside their menu is obviously loaded with protein: lots of beef patties, cheese, bacon and eggs piled onto buns ranging from $5 to $15. I was starving (hungover) and went all the way by ordering the big kahuna: “Bold Burger”: Brioche, two 7 oz. beef patties, applewood smoked bacon, sauteed onions, American and cheddar cheese, pickle, tomato, chipotle sauce, fried egg for $15.

The server said they only serve it well-done because otherwise it falls apart, gross. It’s so big you can’t get your mouth around it and, come on, you can’t eat a big ass burger like that by taking little pansy bites off the bottom! Regretfully, I put it down and used a knife and fork, truly a sad fate for a hamburger. The bun was pleasantly soft but the beef was grossly over-cooked. The cheese and bacon were tasteless and added a little texture to mix up the chewy ground beef. I realized as I was stuffing bite after bite of over-cooked beef patty and cheese into my face that it’s never a good idea to see ground meat. Sausages and hamburgers should always be shrouded in bun, without it they just look gross all mealy and grey! Aside from the obvious food-coma, the burger was pretty bland.

My friend got the more traditional “Bacon & Egg Cheeseburger”: Beef, crispy applewood smoked bacon, cheddar, hard-boiled egg mayo for $12. He says that the best part about it was that the fillings didn’t fall off the bun. It doesn’t get much more boring than that, not even a word about the taste. Not good Stand4, not good.

I wouldn’t go back except maybe to actually stand up and have a beer.

Poor execution really kills them here:

I know I asked for it, but look at that:

It’s absurd:

How petite by comparison:

Let’s savor the irony for a moment: a Korean hot dog chain named “New York Hot Dogs” opens in Korea offering New York-style dogs, does well, and finally opens a branch in New York and serves Korean-style hamburgers. Is it opposite day?! Do people always want what they don’t know? I’m lost. Enough cultural confusion, back to the sandwiches; I tried both the kimchi-bulgogi hamburger (free, usually $5) and the bulgogi hot dog ($6). Both were good, but the hamburger was fantastically spicy thanks to the kimchi. I love bulgogi as much as the next, but on top of a hot dog it was just savory meat overload. It was so heavy and meaty I could barely finish it (also I had just eaten the hamburger). The hamburger, by contrast, was fantastically cooked to medium-rare, topped with all kinds of delicious sauces and had an intriguing spicy, meaty, cabbage taste. It was wonderful and is quite a bargain for $5.

Go forth and savor the kimchi-burger!

Decently prepared ingredients and a slightly complex than usual:

Fresh Burger. I have no idea why they mix in regular lettuce or cabbage with the kimchi:

Bitten Burger:

Hotdog, boxed:

Meat overload:

It sounds incredibly boring on the menu, “Cold Turkey Sandwich: everything kaiser roll, fresh mozzarella, grilled eggplant” ($12). I was expecting drippy, dry mozzarella; ice cold, dry turkey and some sweet, grilled eggplant slices. What I got instead took me all night to unravel. The turkey tasted like the day after thanksgiving, the mozzarella was subtle and salty and the eggplant, oh the eggplant. What they left off the menu might as well be summarized with one word: “magic”. I have no idea how they did it, but they added these magic sauces to both sides of the kaiser that just makes the sandwich come alive. I think it was some kind of red-onion, mayonnaise and dill. This sandwich is incredibly complicated, though you’d never know by the lame billing. Go eat it and be amazed!

The fried cod wasn’t as exciting. The menu bills it as a textbook fried cod sandwich: “Fried Fish Sandwich: tartar sauce, shredded cabbage, potato roll. ($10)” Yawn. The sandwich was decent, but as you can see below, the fish was HUGE and the little roll seemed like a joke. Are they telling us to use a knife and fork? Why not give another roll? Or, gosh, find a roll that fits? Just like they left the “magic” off the menu, for the fish sandwich they left off one ingredient: sprouts. Yes, sprouts. After a few bites I realized it’s because they really don’t belong in the sandwich. The perfectly cooked fish would crumble and give beautifully, but those damn sprouts just wouldn’t let go. I had to pull on them with my hands, with all the grace I could muster — it was kinda gross. Much too gross for the classy digs. I guess they wanted to give it a ‘spin’ and it spun wrong.

I’d head back for that magic turkey and a nice glass of wine.

All the food was well prepared, but the cold turkey was a bit more complicated:

You can’t see the magic from here:

There it is, at the top and the bottom!

Gigantor-fish:

Delicious fish, evil sprouts:

marinated white anchovies, with soft-cooked egg, roasted onions, salsa verde and frisee
The recipe is straightforward: soft-cook an egg, toss lettuce with oil and vinegar, toast bread, roast onions and make some salsa verde. Assemble and eat! This ‘wich was easy took cook, easy to eat and if you like salty anchovies, delicious to eat (of course if you don’t like salty anchovies, what in the world are you doing making this sandwich?). This is the kind of sandwich I’d never order out but is perfect for a lazy Sunday or if you want to impress a date on a weekday. The egg gives it nice richness, while the frisee and (of course) anchovies give it salt and vinegar. Yum.

We quickly realized that we cut our bread way too thick and after toasting it became a bit challenging to eat without shredding the insides of our mouths (a la captain crunch). The bread should be about a quarter to half an inch thick. The picture quality on these isn’t very good, but don’t let that keep you from closing your eyes, visualizing the sandwich sitting there on the plate, no one’s around, go right ahead, take a little bite, one little bite won’t be noticed, you walk up and can already smell the vinegar and oil, a look over your shoulder, no one’s around, you raise it to your mouth and …

Open:

Constructed:

Constructed, again:

Short of baking the bread and smoking the ham, we cooked everything from scratch. Sure it took a while, but anything else might taint the beautiful potential of the axis of pork. We grabbed: challah rolls, fresh pork cutlets, black forest smoked ham, potatoes, gruyere and some eggs. In short: warm the oil, fry the potatos, pound and bread the pork, fry the pork, fry the french fries, melt the cheese, construct the sandwich and worship the swine. [Update, 8/2/09: Somehow in my porky-delusion I forgot to mention that we fried everything in a mixture of duck-fat and oil! Why not, right?]

Mr Bourdain wasn’t kidding. This sandwich is mind-blowing! The roll starts the taste off soft and slightly eggy, the smoked ham gives a nice cool texture and then the cutlet provides crunch and heft, the bacon more crunch and butter and the egg and gruyere give it a wonderful finish. I couldn’t talk much during the sandwich other than to mumble incoherently while my brain tried to unravel the explosion of flavors and the synapses untangled. Yes, it’s that good.

On the show, the chef said a bartender made it one night to sober a few people up. I had an extra sandwich from the night before and set out to see how well it works. After a few vodka tonics, I can report that there is no finer sobering-food than the three little pigs. Everything about this sandwich just soaks up the booze and leaves you ready to rub your eyes, scrub up and walk into the operating room with a clear head and a steady hand. Okay, maybe not THAT good, but it’s pretty incredible. (Plus it tastes like magic.)

I can’t (and won’t) say that it’s the best sandwich in America, but it’s definitly on the short-list! Go forth and celebrate the 3 little pigs!

Nearly Finished:

Awaiting an Egg:

In Process

Plated: