Life is too short to worry about how to eat a sandwich. You should just be able to pick up a sandwich and eat it with little to no effort. However, it seems to make sandwiches fancier, restaurants just stack them taller.
We have seen the emergence of triple-decker sandwiches or “Tall Boys” (Primanti Bros), which is a marketing tactic that enables restaurants to charge you more. The extra meat sounds enticing, but with other sides, this extra-large sandwich is not something someone really needs and ends up being a waste of money.
So how do you even eat a sandwich that is too tall? I’m not sure how big your bite is, but I cannot even make it through a double-decker sandwich without half of the ingredients falling off. This is aggravating as my sandwich fillings just become a pile on the plate, essentially a deconstructed salad.
The solution to eating such a large sandwich is to take the ingredients out of the middle to lower the size, eat one layer at a time, or take half the sandwich home for the next day. So it is not a complete waste of ingredients, but a leftover sandwich is not quite as enjoyable as a fresh one. After sitting in the fridge, the bread becomes soggy and the joy of eating it later is severely diminished.
Eating a sandwich should be stress-free and enjoyable, and it is clear that taller sandwiches are not the solution. Are marketers going the wrong direction, should they be expanding the width of the sandwich rather than the height? If they are just trying to make a profit, it would make sense to serve a sandwich of the same height but larger area.
However, issues will arise, as the standard size of bread would have to be altered. It seems that bread on all sandwiches across a variety of restaurants is essentially the same size. The part that differs for each sandwich is the filling and the height.
So this begs the question, what is the best sandwich size?
I am absolutely against sandwiches with more than two pieces of bread. We can eliminate double-deckers and above from contention. I acknowledge that sandwiches with jelly are too thin and require some more substance.
I think the best sandwich size is where you can bite into the sandwich without overextending your jaw. The bite will also contain each component of the sandwich and there is no significant loss of ingredients during the bite.
For me, this is a sandwich stacked with about two or three pieces of meat folded, cheese, lettuce, and tomato. However, the ideal sandwich will vary between people, as we all have different bite sizes. What is your ideal sandwich size?
