Daily Loaf

William Taylor of Centreville, VA is not happy. Much to the amusement of commuters, he stood at the corner of a bustling intersection for the past two mornings, telling the world he is a cheater.

After Taylor’s wife found incriminating photos on his cell phone, she came up with an unusual punishment for her philandering husband. She specified that, during morning rush hour, he must stand at a busy D.C. area intersection wearing an “I cheated” sandwich board… for a week. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year I obsess about the first few weeks of school. Not because I’m worried about my children’s teachers — I’m more concerned about lunchtime.

My kids do purchase the stuff made at school, but there are also times when they’re fortunate to have fabulous food prepared for them by their gourmet cook father. Yes, we do send leftovers and those wonderful Thermos containers that keep food hot are a godsend. But all too soon there will be days when a quickly made sandwich ends up in the bag.

What causes me consternation is not that my kids will get odd looks when they bring a frittata or curry soup that might not appear on a regular school lunch menu; rather it is that the kind of sandwich my children prefer always gets a comment from a new teacher or another child in class who isn’t familiar with our sandwich filler choices.

My kids like Nutella. For those not familiar with it, Nutella looks like a chocolate spread, so to the untrained eye my children are eating a chocolate sandwich. In these days of hyped up healthy eating-isms, chocolate is bad!

At some point, early in the year, I find myself explaining: Read the rest of this entry »

I think I know what the main cultural difference between French and American people really is: It’s the sandwich.

Being brought up in France, a country with strong culinary roots, I’ve always known that a sandwich for lunch isn’t a meal; it’s a snack. When you’re in a hurry, in Paris or elsewhere, you grab a sandwich au pate, au saucisson or au jambon. Not much choice there, since it consists of a piece of baguette, a thin spread of butter, and pate or salami or ham. It would not occur to a Frenchman to ask for more butter, less ham, or more baguette, and maybe a little olive oil. No, a sandwich is a sandwich.

You may wonder what I’m getting at. I’m talking about my lunch from Publix today. I was in a hurry and for the purpose of complete, full disclosure, maybe not really in the right mood for what was about to follow.

The nice sandwich lady at the Publix store asked me no less than 20 questions. It’s not a sandwich order; it’s an interrogatory!

I understand that she did her job perfectly, if not with the zest of corporate zeal, which I despise, but still, all I wanted was a sandwich, not to tell my life story to a stranger.

I may be the only one in America to wonder about sandwich interrogation procedures, so just to let you experience it for yourself, let me feed you with 20 sandwich-ordering questions. Now remember, all you really want is a roast beef sandwich, and you really couldn’t care less what goes into it, as long as bread and roast beef were involved. Read the rest of this entry »

We Americans love sandwiches. Forget the melting pot or the mixing bowl, nothing more epitomizes America’s indulgent appetite and desire for mobility than the sandwich. They are more than the sum of their parts. They are instantly recognizable and are infinitely variable.

Our most famous sandwiches have international roots. Hamburgers and hot dogs are from Germany. Italian-Americans perfected subs and Jews gave us corned beef on rye. Here in Tampa, we have the Cuban sandwich, and St. Pete Beach arguably gave tourists the non-ethnic grouper sandwich (if you can find grouper at all).

Our friends from Vietnam have a unique contribution for America’s vaunted sandwich canon: the banh mi.  For all the suffering the French caused in Indochina, the Vietnamese recognized the value of baguettes, pate, and mayonnaise.

Starting with a split baguette, a banh mi Read the rest of this entry »

Saigon Deli
4 stars
3962 W. Waters Ave., Tampa, 813-932-0300

I have a friend who is, to say the least, an adventurous eater. He’s my go-to guy for pickled meat and brown Scandinavian cheese tastings. But when it comes to actually sitting down for an extended meal from some of the more mundane ethnic cuisines, he balks. Especially when it comes to Southeast Asia. Why? He misses the bread.

Thankfully, there is one Pacific Rim culinary hotspot that can treat him right. One remnant of years of French colonial influence in Vietnam is a tradition of bread-making that is completely out of character to the bean- and rice-flour culinary cultures that surround the country (and, to be certain, dominate inside Vietnam, as well.) Baguettes are still a rare side in most spots — besides the occasional hunk of crusty bread with soup or stew — but there is one bready, largely-Western treat that the Vietnamese enjoy with relish: banh mi.

Banh mi are the same kinds of street food sandwiches that you see on every street corner in Paris, just a simple combination of meat and accompaniments that’s perfect for a light meal on the go. In France, these portable snacks are astounding thanks to great bread and good cheese. In Vietnam, the accompaniments are what elevate the banh mi to world-class standard.

And Saigon Deli is a mecca for some of the best banh mi in the Bay area. Read the rest of this entry »

Starbucks biggest problem — besides its signature burned coffee — has always been the lack of savory treats available for a nosh. It’s difficult to spend six hours in a coffee shop working on your never-to-be-published novel or playing internet poker with only slabs of lemon poundcake or tiny packets of sweetened almonds for sustenance. Even just a bagel and packet of Philly cream cheese would have been enough.

In the midst of its ongoing financial woes and loss of market share, Starbucks has been groping about for any possible way to drive people back to the stores. Extended hours, pseudo-free wifi, no decaf after Noon and now, finally, savory sandwiches at almost all locations, with breakfast “value meals” that start today.

After tasting every piece of savory food on the menu, all I can ask is: “Dear God, Starbucks, why?!” Read the rest of this entry »

This current frigid weather calls for some serious action: soup and sandwiches. There’s nothing like a warm bowl of comfort, with toasty sandwich alongside, to chase away the chills.

Here are some recipes to mix and match for a cozy winter meal: Read the rest of this entry »

With cool, high-end joints like Ocean Prime and Aquaknox opening in recent weeks, it seems a little strange that a place like Datz Deli (2616 S. MacDill Ave., Tampa, 813-831-7000) is consuming the attention of many Bay area foodies. Actually, considering the economy — and Tampa’s distinct lack of big-time New York-style delis — maybe that’s not so surprising after all.

By all accounts, Datz’s opening last week was madhouse. Yesterday, though, they started doing table service, so I popped in for a look (and a couple overstuffed sandwiches, of course). Read the rest of this entry »