Would you swap a roast dinner, the holy grail of British meals, for a sandwich? The mere suggestion would usually cause me to spill my gravy in horror, but it’s 12.30 on a Sunday afternoon and I am one of a queue of people doing exactly that.
Behind the thick, red windowless steel door of the Secret Sandwich Shop in Notting Hill, west London, I will soon be tucking into a thing of beauty: an egg mayo sandwich. And before you raise your eyebrows (egg mayo is as divisive as Marmite in the lunchbox world), let me explain that this is not just any sandwich. Between two slices of chunky, toasted white milk bread are generous layers of the silkiest egg mayo mix, crunchy watercress, cracked black pepper and the star of the sando: a soft-boiled egg with an oozy dark orange yolk. This is a whole meal. It takes me 20 minutes to finish it. It even has celebrity fans. In October the singer Dua Lipa posted a snap of an egg-laden sando on Instagram. The catch? It costs £10.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it became acceptable to charge this much for a sandwich. They were once the bread and butter of cheap lunches, but over the past year or so they have been elevated to new gourmet heights. The “sandwich reveal” — a photo of a sandwich’s cross-section showing the layers of fillings inside — are all over Instagram. And securing that particular sandwich at that particular deli before it sells out is the latest culinary brag.
• The ultimate egg sandwich recipe
Gone are the days of limp, sad fillings inside squishy, soggy bread. Today’s flavours are inventive. The most popular flavour at Dom’s Subs in Hackney, east London, is the Grapow (£9), a sub roll filled with Thai ground chicken, pickles, carrots, chilli and toasted rice powder. The Dusty Knuckle bakery, also in east London, sells a sarnie filled with porchetta, sweet onions, crackling and watercress (£10.50) and Mondo Sando in Camberwell, south London, serves “executive lunchtime solutions” in the form of flavours such as the £9 Mondo BMT (fennel and piccante salami and pistachio mortadella). Meanwhile, in Manchester’s coolest neighbourhood, Ancoats, the Bada Bing deli is building butties filled with slices of Italian pistachio mortadella for £9, and in Edinburgh at Earls sandwich shop you can get a smoked mackerel and hot sauce focaccia creation for £11. They sound delicious, but can they be worth the cost?
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“If you came in here and saw us using the same ingredients as Pret then I’d tell you you’re being ripped off, but the price is reflective of the quality of what we use,” explains Robie Uniacke, a nightlife businessman and founder of the Secret Sandwich Shop. Inspired by the Japanese “Wanpaku” trend for colourful, layered sandwiches, he set up the small restaurant above the Globe, one of the capital’s longest-running nightclubs, when his bars closed during lockdown. The shop is now open seven days a week, 11am to 3pm, and sells close to 200 sandwiches a day. Tucked down a side street a ten-minute walk from Portobello Road, it also hosts invitation-only Secret Sandwich parties.
“It’s easy for me to justify the price,” Uniacke says. “Our milk bread is freshly made by an award-winning Japanese baker and takes three days to ferment. Our ingredients are all top quality and seasonal. It all helps to create a sandwich that’s as much about texture and flavour as presentation.”
The most popular and expensive flavour at the Secret Sandwich Shop is the Hungry Dane, a triple meat feast of pastrami, ham and salami with Swiss cheese that costs £12. It’s far more than you would pay for a supermarket meal deal or if you made your own lunch, but our attitude to lunchtime has changed over the past two years, explains Nick Willoughby, the founder of the Black Pig in Borough Market, who last year set out to serve “the best sandwiches in London” with slow-roasted pork creations, including the smoked scamorza with fennel and apple slaw (£9)
“Working from home means that lunches have become precious. People want to treat themselves from time to time,” he says. “Our sandwiches are so much more than a bacon sandwich. They’re an affordable luxury. As much labour and love goes into every one as a roast dinner.”
Other chefs agree. “We’ve created something moreish, delicious and memorable,” says Max Tobias, who co-founded the Dusty Knuckle Bakery with two friends, Daisy Terry and Rebecca Oliver. “Yeah, OK, it’s a sandwich, but it’s been made by a top-notch chef using the best seasonal ingredients and if it didn’t have two slices of bread around it and was on a plate, you’d probably be paying double.
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There’s no sign of the appetite for hefty sandwiches waning. Dom’s Subs, east London’s hottest sandwich shop and delivery service, has opened a second site and runs regular pop-ups around the capital.
So what’s the key to making a sell-out sarnie? Uniacke swears by the condiments, which he sources from Japan. “A bad sauce makes a bad sandwich,” he says.
Willoughby says it’s dedication — the pork in the Black Pig’s sandwiches is slow-roasted for ten hours before spending another hour smoking over applewood — and to not forget the bread. His team worked with a south London bakery for several months to create the perfect chewy ciabatta. For Dom Sherington, co-founder of Dom’s Subs, the building blocks of a great sandwich are simple. “The perfect sandwich is personal. We always say make it for your taste. Think about the flavours and textures you really enjoy eating and base it on that,” he says.
“A good rule of thumb is to have something a bit sharp in there, like pickles. Then you want something that’s a bit spicy, like chillis. Then add something soft like a cheese followed by ingredients that will add some good crunch. Think of the textures,” he continues. “If you’ve got a mixture of those, that sounds like a pretty brilliant sandwich.”
