If you, like me, have been inundated this festive period with the supermarkets’ mediocre and, quite frankly, insipid attempts at the Christmas sandwich then I implore you to keep reading. Like I say to the very few ladies I’ve miraculously managed to woo back to my bedroom, ‘I’ll try not to disappoint’.
When it comes to festive sandwiches, I feel like every Christmas plays the same broken, monotonous record. Very few give me the excitement of the Coca Cola advert, for example, or the pure elation and bodily rush I endure while inhaling my entire chocolate calendar on 1 December (cuff me). Therefore, when I went sniffing one scintillating Saturday for some sangers that weren’t born out of a plastic sleeve, I stumbled, like a drunk Santa into a bottle of sherry, into these four beauties.
My man Charlie G [owner of Project Sandwich] certainly knows his way around a bun or two (and here I am restraining all forms of crudity). What’s inside though? Gravy-drowned pork shoulder, sage and crackling stuffing crumb, mustard cabbage and pickled cranberries. For this I’d strongly advise wearing a bib: on the one hand, it’ll serve to protect your finest oxford blue shirt from gushings of gravy and the odd, stray cranberry. On the other, you can treat yourself to a swamp-like dessert after.
Wednesdays at Kerb Street Food Market, West India Quay, Docklands E14 4ED
SAGE-AND-ONION-STUFFING-BATTERED BUTTERMILK CHICKEN! I REPEAT, STUFFING-BATTERED BUTTERMILK CHICKEN! I don’t care about the rest (actually I do) but what a revelation.
Accompanied by a sausage patty, sweet maple bacon and smoked Monterey Jack cheese, I haven’t had such a textural orgasm in ages. It makes me question what else I can batter in stuffing...
Birthdays, 33–35 Stoke Newington Road, N16 5BJ
There’s no denying the fact that I bleed Dusty Knuckle bread – I just can’t get enough of the stuff. Aside from it being a social enterprise, teaching those less fortunate the art of bread-making, their bread makes you want to do a little dance, naked, whistling the tune of Sugar Plum Fairy. Marinated buffalo mozzarella, shredded sprouts, fennel and apple salad and candied walnut. Ho! Ho! Ho!
Abbot Street, E8 3DP
First, I must apologise for the abhorrent photo. I was fighting a losing battle against natural light, and the few jars of amber nectar I inhaled prior to this shot didn’t help matters. Of all the sandwiches I ate, this was the most ‘roast dinner’ in bread and the novelty gravy drenching and popcorn snow went down a treat – faster, even, than the beers. Bloody delicious, I might go back for a better photo: smoked turkey, stuffing patty, buttered sprouts, pickled carrot and red cabbage.
87 Brixton Village Market, SW9 8PS and 21-23 Tooting High Street, SW17 0SN