For sometime now I have been walking along Clark St to various other eateries and keep on passing by the “Sandwich me In” sandwich shop. Each time I think ‘dang it’ I could have eaten there, but then another week passed by and I had forgotten to try them out. So this weekend I was determined to finally ‘sandwich them in’

Both inside and outside your eyes are embattled with a selection of tasty sounding sandwiches, specials, and sides. The ‘sandwich’ board outside listed the specials, daily soups and homemade drinks. In the window is a picture montage of all the sandwiches that they have on offer, while inside there is a huge chalk board giving the breakdown of each sandwich. There are a lot of really great sounding combinations and initially I was considering one of their pork loin or pulled pork sandwiches. But no, I was sucked into having a Fried Egg BLT, well when I say that it sucked me in, to be honest it just shouted out to me from the menu board and became the only option I wanted to consider.

All of the sandwiches came with a choice of salad, shoestring potato chips (with BBQ dipping sauce) or the soup of the day, but I suppose I didn’t really have to tell you that as it is on the picture of the sandwich board I already showed you and the savvy of you will have noted two soups, maybe I should just post pics. It’ll be worse further down the page when I basically repeat the ingredients of the chosen sandwich expanding each item description with words such as ‘tasty’, ‘crunchy’, ‘crisp’, and even a rather lame ‘nice’. So anyhow I chose the homemade tomato soup and I also had one of their homemade watermelon sodas too.

They gave me a large wooden brick with pictures of pigs on it as my ‘ticket’ and I settled down to wait while watching them cook my treats on the flat top. I was hoping that the pig brick was a reminder tool for the ‘bacon’ sandwich and not a comment on my good self. I am sure it was just a coincidence they were too nice in there 🙂

Ok so this is the part of the post where I promised to basically plagiarise the menu inserting occasional descriptive words here and there. So now the pressure is on to be more original. So starting with the Tomato soup, this was basically tomato flavoured and orange, and in a bowl, you see it is not as easy as it seems to be to write this stuff. OK try again, the soup was thin, but not watery, you could tell it was homemade from fresh tomatoes as there was none of that tinny flavour from canned tomato or tomato pastes, also no acidic bite either. It also had a nice peppery finish to the back of the throat. I really liked it and could have eaten a whole lot more. Now for the sandwich, it was not all quite as I had expected, the bacon was chopped up into small pieces and was crispy almost to burnt but just a few moments before burnt so that it was almost caramalised and crunchy. The fried egg could have been done a little less as I like it with the egg yolk still runny so that it makes a creamy sauce to my sandwich, but then again maybe it kept cooking in the sandwich while I was eating (or is it drinking?) my soup. The best bit about the lettuce and the tomato was that they did not get in the way of the bacon and the egg. The mayo was a really sweet little sauce that elevated the sandwich beyond your basic BLT. I did have to read the menu to find out that it was a roasted red pepper mayo, but I may have eventually worked that out for myself after several minutes spent mopping it up of the plate with the rest of my bread and later sponging the spillages off my sweater.

They did promise on the menu board that this was their take on the classic BLT and to be honest I think I like their take better than the classic. I would eat it again  and I do recommend it, but probably I would recommend taking note of their description and just glossing over my attempt to describe it, could have been worse I could have used my usual ‘tasty and nice’ .

The menu has a pretty enticing selection that is encouraging a return, in particular the breakfast option – “Scramble Eggs – with three picks of smoked bacon, fresh sausage, country ham, diced tomatoes or ricotta cheese’ is floating my taste boat, I expect that I would be leaving the tomato and cheese out of that one, or maybe I will just slip a little bit of ‘outside’ cheddar into my napsack (as if  would).

So “Sandwich Me In” is located at 3037 N. Clark Street, reasonably close to both the Belmont and the Wellington El stops.

website: http://sandwichmeinchicago.com/ you can also follow them on twitter @SandwichMeIn and on Facebook.

Not only is the sandwich menu well thought out and wide ranging, but they are trying to operate on a sustainable basis, more detail of which can be found on their site and on the walls of their shop. Give them a try, well worth the efforts.