Sandwiches

“I’m hungry. Can someone please help me?  Please. This is serious.  I haven’t eaten since early this morning. Please.” The plea came from a diminutive man I had just rushed passed on 8th Avenue in New York City.  He was wearing a grey cap pulled down over his forehead and held a tattered white plastic shopping bag.  It was 12:30 a.m. A hard March wind was blowing through Chelsea and everyone who passed this pleading man, was hurrying to someplace warm, including me. 

I had just eaten at one of my favorite joints Casa Mono. I started with the  pulpo with fennel and grapefruit and followed with the dorada with artichokes and langostinos (the langoustine tail meat was a bit mushy but still flavorful.) My belly was full and I still had the glow of a quarto of solid Spanish red. 

For a reason I still do not know, after getting a few steps past this man, who was all but invisible to passers-by, I stopped and waited for him to catch up. When I offered  a dollar bill to him, he said, “No man, didn’t you hear,  I’m hungry. This is no joke.  I don’t want money. I’m just very  hungry.” “Really, no bullshit?”  I said.

My family likes sandwiches.  My present husband had his bachelor party at Langer’s.  The day before our wedding, while I was at a ladies’ lunch thrown by my sisters, my husband, his son, my son, his daughter’s boyfriend, my brother-in-law, and one of my nephews went to Langer’s Deli (across the street from MacArthur Park) and ordered pastrami sandwiches, lots of them, I understand, more than one apiece.  And it was further evidence to me that I was marrying the right person.

In our family, we think of sandwiches as comfort food.   The slightest thing, a bad grade, a lost soccer game, a minor heartbreak can prompt any one of us to say, “How do you feel about a sandwich?” – which is code for:  Let’s all jump in the car and go to the fish market in Malibu, Bay Cities in Santa Monica, Bryan’s Pit Barbecue in the Farmers’ Market...” or any number of other places where they have a great sandwich.  

A Monte Cristo consists of ham, turkey or chicken, and Swiss cheese sandwiched between two slices of white or challah bread that is dipped in an egg batter, then grilled or fried in butter until golden brown. It is often dusted with confectioners’ sugar and served with a side of red currant jelly.

The Monte Cristo is an American version of the Croque-Monsieur, the famed French grilled cheese and ham sandwich that is fried in clarified butter.

The sandwich first appeared on the menu at Gordon’s, a restaurant on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, but it didn't get its big break until Disneyworld got involved. When the Blue Bayou Restaurant in the Pirates of the Caribbean put the Monte Cristo on its menu, its popularity soared.

I hadn't eaten a Monte Cristo since I was a kid, and I didn't remember particularly loving it. My, how things have changed. This sandwich has it all: it's sweet, salty, and chewy. It's addictive.

My dad was a two job guy.  We lived in a representative, working class neighborhood in Brooklyn, which was to me, the paradise of the world.  Representative I learned years later meant not just Jewish people, like us, but an equal mix of almost everything else.  The working class is obvious.

My dad worked at a brokerage house on Wall Street as a runner from 9 to 3.  That was his first job.  His second job was at the Morgan Annex branch of the US Post Office, in mid-town Manhattan.  He had started at the PO as a teen-ager, and was in it for the longest possible haul, a modest pension being the carrot at the end of his rainbow.  His hours on that job were 4 pm to mid-night.  He rode the subway to work.  He never owned a car.  Once in a long while he got driven home.