99 Fun Facts About Sandwiches

In the famous 1770s anecdote, Lord Sandwich ate beef between slices of toast rather than leave what?

The gambling table is where a French visitor's 1770 book put him, playing for 24 hours on nothing but beef between toast. His biographer thinks it likelier he simply ate at his desk while working.

Which McDonald's sandwich won its menu spot in 1962 by outselling Ray Kroc's meatless pineapple 'Hula Burger'?

Filet-O-Fish was a Cincinnati franchisee's fix for Catholic customers who skipped burgers on Fridays. In Kroc's one-day sales test it sold 350 and won hands down.

Honoring the 4th Earl of Sandwich, Captain James Cook named which islands the 'Sandwich Islands' in 1778?

Hawaii got the name because the earl headed the Royal Navy as First Lord of the Admiralty, the office that sent Cook's ships into the Pacific.

The sage Hillel the Elder is said to have wrapped Paschal lamb and bitter herbs in what?

Soft matzah made Hillel's wrap, and the Passover Seder still re-enacts it: in the korech step, diners eat bitter herbs between pieces of matzah in memory of his custom.

In 2024 an Indiana judge ruled that which foods are 'Mexican-style sandwiches'?

Tacos and burritos counted because the plaza was limited to made-to-order sandwich shops, so the ruling cleared a Famous Taco restaurant to open.

Paddington Bear keeps which kind of sandwich under his hat in case of emergencies?

Marmalade sandwiches went royal in 2022: in a Platinum Jubilee sketch, the Queen showed Paddington the one she kept in her handbag for emergencies.

A classic club sandwich stacks turkey, lettuce and tomato with which other meat?

Bacon was missing from the earliest known description, in an 1889 New York paper: a Union Club sandwich of turkey or chicken and ham between two slices of toasted graham bread.

One origin story credits the Reuben to a Nebraska grocer's weekly hotel poker game in which city?

Omaha grocer Reuben Kulakofsky asked for corned beef and sauerkraut at the Blackstone Hotel's poker night. The hotel put it on its menu, and in 1956 it won a national sandwich contest.

Which cheese belongs on a classic Reuben?

Swiss cheese melted over corned beef is why the deli icon isn't kosher: Jewish dietary law forbids eating meat and dairy together.

Pat and Harry Olivieri, credited with inventing the Philly cheesesteak, originally ran what kind of stand?

Hot dog sales paid the bills until the brothers fried beef and onions for their own meal in the early 1930s; a cab driver smelled it, asked to buy one, and told them to sell that instead.

Which topping became the signature of the sandwiches at Pat's King of Steaks?

Cheez Whiz only reached shops in the early 1950s, some twenty years after Pat and Harry Olivieri's first steak sandwich, which had no cheese at all.

A popular story says the po' boy was named for free sandwiches given to 1929 strikers from which industry?

Streetcars: ex-conductors Bennie and Clovis Martin promised striking carmen free meals and recalled greeting each one with 'Here comes another poor boy.' One local historian doubts the tale.

A po' boy ordered 'dressed' comes with shredded lettuce, tomato, pickles and what?

Mayonnaise completes the dressing. The bread was made to order too: in 1929 baker John Gendusa created a long, uniform loaf so several big sandwiches could be cut from each one.

The muffuletta is said to have been created in 1906 at Central Grocery on Decatur Street in which city?

New Orleans grocer Salvatore Lupo is said to have watched Sicilian farmers balance bread, meat, cheese and olive salad on their laps, then packed it all into one round loaf.

In the TV series The Bear, chef Carmy returns home to Chicago to run a family shop built around which sandwich?

Italian beef is a Chicago creation, not an import from Italy. In the usual telling, immigrant families slow-cooked cheap, tough cuts and sliced them very thin to feed a crowd.

Which meat is traditionally layered into a Tampa-style Cuban sandwich but left out of the Miami version?

Genoa salami most likely came from the Italians who worked beside Cubans and Spaniards in Ybor City's cigar factories. Miami's mayor once scoffed that salami is for pizza.

When World War I cut off wheat, bakers in French-ruled Vietnam stretched their baguette dough with which cheap ingredient?

Rice flour made a wartime 'pain de riz' that was dropped once the war ended. The belief that it is what makes bánh mì airy is a myth, says cookbook author Andrea Nguyen.

What is France's grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich called when topped with a fried or poached egg?

Croque madame is the egg-topped twin of the croque monsieur, literally a 'crunch mister' from croquer, to crunch. The egg is often said to suggest a lady's hat.

The Monte Cristo took off after the Blue Bayou Restaurant at which theme park began serving it?

Disneyland didn't invent it: egg-dipped, fried cousins of France's croque monsieur sat in American cookbooks for decades before the Blue Bayou's menu made the Monte Cristo a park legend.

Which lunchbox staple's first known recipe dates from 1901, when its spread was still a tearoom delicacy?

PB&J began posh: Julia Davis Chandler's 1901 recipe called for thin bread fingers with currant or crab-apple jelly. Cheaper peanut butter later turned it into a children's lunch.

Which company patented the sealed crustless sandwich in 1999 and launched Uncrustables the next year?

Smucker's bought the idea from two Midwestern dads who made crustless sandwiches for schools. Its patent on a household sandwich drew ridicule, and in 2005 a federal appeals court judged it too obvious to protect.

The towering Dagwood sandwich is named after a character from which comic strip?

Blondie's husband, Dagwood Bumstead, has raided the fridge for teetering snacks since 1936, and 'Dagwood' now sits in dictionaries as a word for any many-layered sandwich.

One theory traces which saucy sandwich to the 'loose meat sandwiches' a cook sold in 1930s Sioux City, Iowa?

Sloppy joe, in the account Heinz's test kitchen dug up, began in a Sioux City cafe with a cook named Joe. One food encyclopedia is blunter: there was probably never a Joe at all.

Philippe the Original and Cole's, rival claimants to the French dip, are both restaurants in which city?

Los Angeles, not France, is the French dip's home. Philippe's says a cook dropped a roll into the roasting pan by accident; Cole's says a customer with sore gums asked for his bread softened.

Philadelphia's word 'hoagie' is linked to Italian-American workers at which World War I-era shipyard?

Hog Island's Italian shipbuilders were nicknamed 'hoggies', and the name is said to have passed to their big lunch rolls. Historians doubt it, since the word doesn't turn up in print until the 1930s.

What is the traditional New York City name for a submarine sandwich?

Hero has no settled origin; the best guess is that you had to be one to finish it. Its earliest sightings, in 1930s New York, include a list of armored-car guards' slang.

In which city might an old-timer order a sub by asking for a 'spukie'?

Boston's spukie is named for the spuccadella, a long Italian roll, and the word survives mostly in old neighborhoods like Dorchester and South Boston.

Which sandwich chain began in 1965 as a Bridgeport shop named Pete's, after the physicist who lent its teenage founder $1,000?

Subway's first shop lost money, so 17-year-old Fred DeLuca and lender Peter Buck opened a second one 'to create the image of success'. That one lost money too.

The Fool's Gold Loaf, which Elvis is said to have flown from Graceland to eat, came from which city?

Denver's Colorado Mine Company stuffed a whole loaf with peanut butter, jelly and a pound of bacon. As the legend goes, 22 of them met Elvis's jet one night in 1976, and he flew home without leaving the airport.

Britain's chip butty, hymned in a Sheffield United terrace anthem, is buttered bread filled with what?

French fries, or chips to the British, make the chip butty a fried-potato sandwich. Sheffield United fans belt out its praises to the tune of the love ballad 'Annie's Song'.

Which bakery product did the US government briefly ban during World War II?

Sliced bread was banned in January 1943 as a wartime saving, and after a household uproar the order was lifted within two months. The New York Times cheered: 'Housewives' Thumbs Safe Again.'

Coronation chicken, the curried sandwich filling beloved in Britain, was created for which monarch's coronation lunch?

Elizabeth II's 1953 coronation lunch for 350 foreign guests was cooked and served by cookery students from Le Cordon Bleu London. Their menu called the cold curried chicken Poulet Reine Elizabeth.

What does the Danish word 'smørrebrød' literally mean?

Butter and bread is all the name promises: smør og brød, a buttered slice of dense dark rye. The roast beef, herring or prawns piled on top never get a mention.

Caffè Mulassano, whose plaque credits a former owner with inventing the crustless tramezzino, stands in which Italian city?

Turin's Caffè Mulassano, barely 31 square metres, credits Angela Demichelis Nebiolo with inventing the tramezzino in 1926. Bars in Venice claim the soft white sandwich as well.

Legend credits which Italian writer with coining 'tramezzino' to replace the English word 'sandwich'?

Gabriele D'Annunzio gets the credit for the word, a diminutive of tramezzo, 'in between'. It caught on under the Fascist regime's campaign to purge Italian of foreign words.

Guadalajara's torta ahogada takes its name from being what?

Drowned in sauce is what 'ahogada' literally means: the sandwich is dunked whole in chile de árbol salsa. Its salty, crusty birote roll is prized because it survives the soaking.

Kadir Nurman is widely credited with turning doner kebab into a handheld fast food in 1972 at a stall in which city?

West Berlin's hurried workers, Nurman reckoned, wanted a meal they could carry. He never patented the idea or grew rich from it, and said he was glad it gave so many Turkish people a living.

American gyros are beef and lamb, but Greek gyros is traditionally which meat?

Pork is the Greek original, stacked on the spit in thin seasoned slices. The American cone is something else: a pressed loaf of ground beef and lamb.

Falafel is a deep-fried fritter that most likely originated in which country?

Egypt's original falafel was made from fava beans, not chickpeas, and probably emerged in the port of Alexandria. It turns up in Egyptian writing only after the British occupation of 1882.

Which spread did chemist Cyril Callister create in Melbourne from leftover brewer's yeast?

Vegemite sold so poorly that in 1928 it was renamed Parwill, for the pun 'If Marmite... then Parwill'. The joke flopped and the original name came back.

A fluffernutter sandwich pairs peanut butter with what?

Marshmallow creme and peanut butter shared a 1918 recipe booklet from a New England maker, which called the pairing a 'Liberty Sandwich'. Merriam-Webster admitted 'fluffernutter' only in 2021.

In 2006 a lawmaker vowed to 'fight to the death for Fluff' and make the fluffernutter the official sandwich of which state?

Massachusetts is Fluff's home, so when a state senator moved to limit school fluffernutters to one a week, lawmaker Kathi-Anne Reinstein answered with the sandwich bill. Neither idea became law.

Maine made it famous, but the lobster roll is usually traced to Milford in which state?

Connecticut's claim rests on Perry's in Milford, where owner Harry Perry is said to have made the first hot buttered roll for a regular customer in the 1920s. Maine's rolls are usually served cold with mayonnaise.

Katz's Delicatessen on New York's Lower East Side is most famous for which hand-carved meat, piled high on rye?

Pastrami on rye is Katz's calling card. The deli claims an 1888 founding, but a food writer found its founders were children that year and traced their first delicatessen listing to 1911.

Katz's wartime slogan urged customers to 'Send a salami to your boy in the' what?

Army completes the rhyme with salami. The slogan dates from World War II, when salamis went out to sons serving overseas, and Katz's still ships them to military addresses.

Which 1989 film's famous deli scene, capped by 'I'll have what she's having', was shot at Katz's?

When Harry Met Sally gave the scene's deadpan punchline to Estelle Reiner, mother of director Rob Reiner. A sign above the table now reads 'Hope you have what she had!'

National Sandwich Day, November 3, marks which event in the 4th Earl of Sandwich's life?

His birth, long dated 3 November 1718, sets the day, though modern references give 13 November. John Montagu was First Lord of the Admiralty, yet it is the snack bearing his title that keeps his birthday on the calendar.

Until hamburgers overtook it in 2017, which baguette sandwich was France's biggest seller?

Jambon-beurre, just ham and butter, was passed once burgers left the fast-food chains: by 2017 most French sit-down restaurants had one on the menu, and they sold most of the burgers.

The chivito, a steak sandwich stacked with ham, cheese and egg, is often called which country's national sandwich?

Uruguay's chivito means 'little goat' yet holds no goat. The story goes that a Punta del Este chef, asked by a visitor for goat he didn't have, improvised with beef steak, and the name stuck.

Astronaut John Young caused a stir at NASA in 1965 by smuggling which sandwich aboard Gemini 3?

Corned beef was the contraband, hidden in a pocket of Young's spacesuit. He offered it to crewmate Gus Grissom in orbit, and NASA later told the crew such unapproved snacks were out for future missions.

Astronauts in orbit make their sandwiches on which crumb-free substitute for bread?

Tortillas do the job because they shed no crumbs, which in microgravity would float around the cabin instead of falling to the floor. Ordinary loaves have proved hard to adapt for spaceflight.

Which sandwich chain is named for the initials of its founders, the Raffel brothers?

Arby's is the sound of the letters R and B, short for Raffel Brothers. Their roast beef sandwiches sold for 69 cents at a time when hamburger stands were charging 15.

Pimento cheese sandwiches are a concession-stand tradition at which major golf tournament?

The Masters has sold pimento cheese sandwiches for generations. Fans noticed at once in 2013, when Augusta National changed food suppliers and the new one could not match the old recipe.

The sandwich nicknamed 'the Elvis', a favorite of Elvis Presley, pairs peanut butter with which fruit?

Banana, sliced or mashed, joins the peanut butter on toasted bread. The pairing is so tied to Presley that it is also sold as the Velvet Elvis.

In Friends, Ross loses his temper when a colleague eats his sandwich of leftovers from which holiday?

Thanksgiving leftovers fill the double-decker that Monica builds for her brother, with a gravy-soaked middle slice of bread. The recipe later appeared in the show's official cookbook.

Franchisee Jim Delligatti created which McDonald's sandwich near Pittsburgh before its 1967 debut?

The Big Mac first sold in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, for 45 cents. Delligatti later said he had not invented it so much as copied the double-deck burger the Big Boy chain had sold since the 1940s.

Which Italian sandwich bread was invented only in 1982, as a baker's answer to the French baguette?

Ciabatta was created by Arnaldo Cavallari in Adria, in the Veneto, because imported baguettes were taking over Italy's sandwich trade. Its name means carpet slipper.

In American slang, someone who threatens to serve you a 'knuckle sandwich' is promising what?

A punch in the mouth is what the phrase means, delivered with a clenched fist. The joke is that the knuckles are the only thing being served.

National Sandwich Month, a US observance separate from November's National Sandwich Day, falls in which month?

August is National Sandwich Month, a full month for trying a new sandwich or inventing one. National Sandwich Day, by contrast, gets only November 3.

Which chain's fried chicken sandwich, launched in 2019, set off the fast-food 'chicken sandwich wars'?

Popeyes started the fight when Chick-fil-A answered its launch by claiming its own sandwich came first. By the end of 2019 Popeyes' sales were up 38 percent and rivals were rushing out copies.

Which Vietnamese sandwich is built on a short, airy baguette, a legacy of French colonial rule?

Bánh mì on its own means any kind of bread, but the name now covers the sandwich too. The French brought the baguette to Vietnam in the 1860s, and local fillings were layered on later.

The muffuletta, a round Sicilian sesame loaf stacked with cold cuts, gets its tang from a chopped salad of what?

Olives, green and black, are chopped with celery, cauliflower and carrots and marinated, then spooned over layers of ham, mortadella and provolone.

The beef broth served for dunking with a French dip sandwich is known by which French phrase?

Au jus means with juice: the thinly sliced roast beef is dunked in broth left over from cooking it. Despite the name, the sandwich is an American invention, apparently called French for its style of roll.

Which playwright had Algernon greedily devour the cucumber sandwiches meant for Lady Bracknell's afternoon visit?

Oscar Wilde opens The Importance of Being Earnest with the gag. Algernon eats every sandwich before his aunt arrives, then has his butler pretend the market had no cucumbers that morning.

Which mobile operating system gave its version 4.0, unveiled in 2011, the code name Ice Cream Sandwich?

Android 4.0 was the release that merged Google's separate phone and tablet designs into one system. It followed the tablet-only Honeycomb in a long run of dessert code names.

Schwartz's, a Jewish deli famed since 1928 for its smoked meat sandwiches, is a landmark of which Canadian city?

Montreal has queued at Schwartz's since a Romanian immigrant, Reuben Schwartz, opened it. A grill cook there is also credited with creating the city's famous steak seasoning from the deli's pickling spices.

The Luther Burger, said to be named for singer Luther Vandross, replaces its bun with which sweet item?

Glazed doughnuts stand in for the bun, which can push the burger to 1,500 calories. One story says a bar owner in Decatur, Georgia, made the swap after running out of buns.

Australia's 'democracy sausage', a sausage wrapped in a slice of bread, is traditionally sold at what kind of place?

Polling places host fundraising sausage sizzles on election day, usually for the school or church lending its hall. 'Democracy sausage' was Australia's Word of the Year for 2016.

The Rachel sandwich, a variation on the Reuben often made with turkey, replaces the sauerkraut with which topping?

Coleslaw stands in for the sauerkraut. The name may be a nod to 'Reuben and Rachel', a song published in 1871 that paired the two names long before either sandwich was famous.

Which diner sandwich grills ground beef, cheese and caramelized onions between two slices of griddled bread?

Patty melt is the name, and cooks cannot agree what it is: some call it a cheeseburger served on sliced bread instead of a bun, others a grilled cheese with a burger tucked inside.

The Hot Brown, an open-faced turkey sandwich under Mornay sauce, was created at a hotel in which Kentucky city?

Louisville is home to the Brown Hotel, where chef Fred Schmidt devised the dish in 1926 as a change from the ham and eggs usually served to late-night diners.

Beef on weck, roast beef on a roll crusted with salt and caraway seeds, is a specialty of which New York city?

Buffalo counts it among its best-known foods. A local pub owner is said to have chosen the salty kummelweck roll in the hope that it would make his customers order more drinks.

A heavily battered tavern sandwich still popular in Indiana's Ohio River valley is filled with which unusual meat?

Brains, sliced and fried, became a fixture of Midwestern menus after the rise of the stockyards in the late 1880s. Mad cow rules now bar those of older cattle, so some cooks have switched to pigs' instead.

The jibarito, created in Chicago's Puerto Rican community, replaces the bread with flattened, fried slices of what?

Plantain, green and fried flat, holds the steak, cheese, lettuce and aioli. Restaurateur Juan Figueroa introduced it in the Humboldt Park neighborhood in 1996, and it soon spread across the city.

The chopped cheese, beef and cheese chopped on a grill, is usually traced to a bodega in which Manhattan neighborhood?

Harlem is its usual birthplace: Hajji's Deli in Spanish Harlem says a worker invented it for himself in the 1990s. Regulars cried foul when upscale shops later sold it at two or three times the bodega price.

Which sandwich chain grew out of Hindsight, a Chicago antique store that turned restaurant in 1977?

Potbelly is named after the potbelly stove. Peter Hastings opened the antique store in the Lincoln Park neighborhood in 1971, and six years later it was retooled as a sandwich shop.

The square-sided 'sandwich loaf', baked in a long lidded pan, is named after which American railcar pioneer?

George Pullman chose the flat-topped loaf for his railcar kitchens because three of them fit in the space of two round-topped ones.

Vada pav, a spiced potato fritter in a soft bread roll, began as cheap street food in which Indian city?

Mumbai mill workers made it a hit. A fritter in a bun was quick to make, cheap, and easy to eat on an overcrowded commuter train, unlike the potato curry and chapati it replaced.

Bunny chow, a hollowed-out loaf of white bread filled with curry, was created in which South African city?

Durban is home to a large community of Indian origin, which created the dish. A cheap white loaf, sold at every local store, made a sturdier takeaway vessel for curry than the traditional roti.

Cape Town's Gatsby, a huge roll stuffed with chips and meat, got its name from a film of which author's novel?

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby, and the film was showing at a local cinema in 1976 when a workman tasting shop owner Rashaad Pandy's new sandwich declared it a 'Gatsby smash'.

Argentina's choripán, a grilled sausage split and served in crusty bread, is customarily dressed with which sauce?

Chimichurri is the customary dressing. The sandwich's name simply joins its two ingredients, chorizo and pan, the Spanish word for bread.

Chile's Barros Luco, a hot sandwich of beef and melted cheese, is named after a man who held which job?

President Ramón Barros Luco, who led Chile from 1910 to 1915, always asked for it in the restaurant of the National Congress. His cousin preferred ham, and that version became the Barros Jarpa.

The francesinha, a meat-filled sandwich smothered in cheese and beer sauce, comes from which Portuguese city?

Porto restaurant A Regaleira first served it in 1953. Its creator had worked in France and Belgium and adapted a French grilled sandwich to local tastes, hence a name meaning little French girl.

The bocadillo de calamares, a crusty roll packed with fried squid rings, is the classic bar snack of which Spanish city?

Madrid, hours from any coast, sells squid sandwiches in most of its bars, above all around the Plaza Mayor. The city even has marked squid sandwich routes for sampling the different versions.

Pan bagnat, a tuna, egg and anchovy sandwich whose name means 'bathed bread', is a specialty of which French city?

Nice sells it in most of its bakeries and markets. The filling is the city's own salade niçoise, and the name comes from the local Nissart dialect, in which it means bathed, or soaked, bread.

Lampredotto, slow-cooked cow's stomach served in a bread roll, is the traditional street food of which Italian city?

Florence cooks simmer the abomasum, the fourth and final stomach, in vegetable broth before chopping it into the roll. The name comes from lampreda, the lamprey eel, which the meat is said to resemble.

The fried Italian cheese sandwich 'mozzarella in carrozza' has a name that puts the mozzarella in a what?

Carriage is what carrozza means. The sandwich is coated in egg and fried until crisp, and it is popular both in Italy's Campania region and in parts of New York City.

Sweden's smörgåstårta, layered bread and creamy fillings sliced at birthdays and weddings, is called what in English?

Sandwich cake is the literal translation. It is garnished and cut like a dessert cake, but it is a savoury main dish, served cold at family gatherings from weddings to funerals.

Japan's popular yakisoba-pan stuffs an oblong white bread roll with which unlikely filling?

Fried noodles, the stir-fried wheat kind called yakisoba, go straight into the roll. The carb-on-carb snack has been nicknamed a spaghetti sandwich.

Kaya toast, a coffee-shop breakfast in Singapore, sandwiches butter and a sweet jam made from which ingredient?

Coconut jam, called kaya, is spread with butter between the slices. Hainanese immigrants are believed to have created the dish after working as cooks on British ships in the port.

Sabich, a stuffed pita based on an Iraqi Jewish breakfast, pairs hard-boiled eggs with fried slices of which vegetable?

Eggplant, fried the day before, was part of a Sabbath breakfast in Iraq. Sabich Tzvi Halabi, an immigrant from Baghdad, first put the separate ingredients into a single pita in Israel in the early 1960s.

Doubles, a street food of Trinidad and Tobago, sandwiches which curried legume between two fried flatbreads?

Chickpeas are the filling. Vendor Emamool Deen first sold them on a single flatbread in 1936, and the name was coined when customers began asking him to double it.

A towering pan-fried mortadella sandwich is the signature snack of the Municipal Market in which Brazilian city?

São Paulo locals call the market the Mercadão. The sandwiches at its Bar do Mané are known for their size, averaging 300 grams of mortadella in a single French-style roll.

The Kaiser roll, a crusty round sandwich bun whose name means 'emperor', originally comes from which country?

Austria knows it as the Kaisersemmel. A popular story says it honors Emperor Franz Joseph I, but the name was already in print by 1825, five years before he was born.

Which Victorian cookery writer's 1861 recipe for a 'toast sandwich' puts a slice of toast between two slices of bread?

Isabella Beeton filed it under cookery for invalids. In 2011 the Royal Society of Chemistry revived it as Britain's most economical lunch, costing as little as 7.5p a serving.

Which Australian appliance brand became a household name after launching its toasted sandwich maker in 1974?

Breville followed its success at home by launching the toasted sandwich maker in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, where it sold just as well.

Which terminally ill songwriter's remark to David Letterman gave the tribute album Enjoy Every Sandwich its title?

Warren Zevon was reflecting on making the most of the time he had left after a diagnosis of mesothelioma. The 2004 album has Don Henley, Jackson Browne and even Adam Sandler singing his songs.

Chile's chacarero, thinly sliced steak on a round roll, is known for which unexpected vegetable topping?

Green beans top the thinly sliced steak, along with tomato and mayonnaise. Time magazine named the chacarero among the 13 most amazing sandwiches in the world.

Which Canadian city made the donair, its sweet-sauced take on the doner kebab, its official food in 2015?

Halifax councillors split evenly on the motion, so the mayor cast the deciding vote. The donair's signature sauce is made with condensed milk, sugar, vinegar and garlic.