I've been eyeing Noodle Bar on 26 Carmine St. (at Bleecker) for the past couple of months as they prepared to open. It's weird to get a sandwich from a place called Noodle Bar, but noodles don't travel well, and I had to walk from West 4th to the office. So I'll try them another time.
The Asia de Cuban sandwich ($8) reminded me of last week's episode of Top Chef. The assignment on the Bravo reality show was to design a fusion street food. One of the teams came up with a Cuban Morroccan Sandwich. When I saw Leanne Wong last week she was still pissed that she and her partner lost to that Cubano. She said that there was nothing Cuban about the sandwich except for the pork. She also said that hot Harold likes Asian girls. Wonder if he'd like this sandwich.
It had all the Cuban elements: roasted pork, cheese, a form of ham, and a pickle of sorts. Their twists were to use kimchee instead of cucumber pickles and China spam instead of ham lunch meat. It wasn't bad, but I think it could have been better. I wanted the bread to be a flat sesame bread like Dumpling House (118 Eldridge St.) uses. I couldn't really taste the roasted pork because the "China spam" overpowered it with flabby saltiness. I dunno what China had to do with it. Spam is spam is spam. This element wasn't terrible. In fact, it reminded me of Vietnamese ban mi sandwich pate, but it could have benefited from being sliced more thinly. The heat from the press would have melted the fat in the spam and moistened the sandwich. Instead, the moisture came from the mayo that was spooged on. There was also added oilyness from the Swiss Cheese which goes great with ham, but again the flavor faught with the spam. A milder cheese should have been used to balance out the strong flavor of the spam and the kimchee. I'm not sure if everyone will like the fiery acidity of the pickled cabbage, but I think it works. Granted, I'm biased, but it added a welcome freshness that could have been heightened with the addition of grated carrot, cilantro, or radish. Again, these are ideas borrowed from the ban mi. Ultimately, I don't think I'd order the sandwich again, but I'm glad I did because it got me thinking about sandwiches that I have loved and new ideas to spice them up.
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3 comments:
The popularity of spam in asian countries is definitely of interest considering that pork can be cooked in a myriad of other ways that are sooo much tastier/healthier/better. That said, I am reminded of an experience in my youth when my dad cooked up some spam and FORCED my brothers and I to try it, saying that it was part of our education, we needed to know what it tasted like. Ham out of a can. Spam. Needless to say, to the shock and horror of our mother, we thought it was delicious.
Spam is gross!
OK. "Melt the fat in the spam"??? Can just say, that's gross. I have never had Spam and thank god my Dad didn't force us to eat it but come to think of it, it's somthing he would try. Sneaky bastard. He would probably have chopped it up and put it in my fried rice and told me it was real ham. AH! Maybe he did! Maybe all these years what I thought was ham was Spam and now I have been put right off my fried rice. Thanks, Liza.
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