Sandwiches seem simple, but even when they are, a sandwich is always more than the sum of its parts. As a concept, it’s clear: good things between bread. But there are seemingly infinite varieties, not just in ingredients, but also in style and form: hoagies, subs, open-face, tortas, bánh mì, sandos. Almost all are designed to be portable and quick — ideal for a meal on the run — with many possible places to procure one: delis, sub shops, gas stations, grocery stores, cafés, even some five-star restaurants, and of course, in the paper sack you packed from home.
A sandwich can be savory (most often) or sweet (think Nutella) or maybe both. It can be pricey or inexpensive, mind-blowing or mid. Is a hamburger a sandwich? What about a wrap or gyro? I don’t know, but I won’t entertain them here. Instead, we celebrate different takes on good things between bread — some homegrown Triangle restaurants where sandwiches transform a lunch break into something far from basic, bringing flavor and big feelings to the table.
Union Special Grown Up Grilled Cheese. Photo contributed by Forrest Mason
It’s no surprise that for Andrew Ullom, a good sandwich starts with the bread. After all, he and his wife Jess own Union Special, a busy bakery and café known for its artisanal breads located in Raleigh’s buzzy Gateway Plaza shopping center. “It’s not just what holds the sandwich together; it’s an ingredient, and it needs great structure and taste,” Andrew says. “You can get the best ingredients together, but if you use bad bread, you’ve ruined the sandwich.”
Using breads made with locally milled flour, like the whole wheat and spelt sourdough Union Sour, or a soft and fluffy potato loaf, Andrew adds thoughtful elements to familiar staples. Instead of mayo the BLT has a chow chow aioli. A turkey melt, made richer with Gruyère cheese, includes a crunchy apple cabbage slaw. Served on a homemade brioche bun slathered with romesco, the Union Egg Sandwich — scrambled eggs and fontina cheese with a big, fat hash brown at its center — has achieved cult status and makes a glorious mess. If you want to lean even more into cheesy goodness, the Grown Up Grilled Cheese includes even more fontina, plus cheddar, kale pesto, and pepper jelly. Served on hearty Union Sour, the bread keeps this flavor bomb together.
“When I take my 9-year-old son out for burgers, he’s like, Dad, you should make the bread,” Andrew says, and I can certainly empathize. It must be hard to downgrade if you’re used to sandwiches like this. There are specials, too, but amid a booming wholesale business that supplies bread all over the region, Andrew keeps the regulars in mind: “We have folks who come in and get the same sandwich a couple of times a week, and I feel a lot of pride in that — consistency is really important.”
The certainty of a beloved sandwich offers comfort in an increasingly chaotic world — ordering the regular and knowing exactly what’s on it supplies a steadiness we sometimes crave. Sandwiches can be symbols, offering simpler times, or comfort foods, like how a PB&J always makes one feel like a kid, even if made with gourmet nut butter instead of Jif.
Side Street Cafe
For those looking for a side of nostalgia with their sandwich, try Side Street Restaurant, which has been operating on a quiet street in Raleigh’s Oakwood neighborhood for 46 years. Tucked away in a largely residential area, this historic restaurant feels like visiting someone’s home. The sandwiches are similarly homey, full of personality and a sense of place — think mama’s pimento cheese, homemade egg salad, and a slate of sandwiches that bear proper names: Hope’s Best (pimiento cheese, veggies, and bacon), Rob’s Barnyard Strut (chicken salad with pecans, apples, and sprouts), and Hank’s Brief (tuna salad in a pita).
Mary Lu Wooten, owner of Side Street Cafe
Side Street is charming and quaint and extremely thoughtful from the menu to the space and service. If you can’t choose between a “Strut” and a “Hank’s,” then order the Split Personality and have both. Because here you can have your bread pudding (or pie — don’t miss the desserts) and eat it, too.
Less than two miles away is Matt Fern’s (ish) delicatessen, a deli counter/café located inside Person Street Pharmacy. Both the location and the menu act like wormholes where one can rapidly travel through influences and time, making sandwiches that feel both familiar and new — it’s a modern-day soda fountain-cum-bottle shop dreamt up by a sandwich visionary and wine connoisseur.
Like Andrew, Matt worked for Ashley Christensen’s company before striking out on his own — Andrew was the executive pastry chef of AC Restaurants, Matt the beverage director. “I had a really great job and decided to trade that in to focus my life on meat and cheese in between bread and get a little strange with it,” Matt says.
As he describes it, (ish) is “kind-of-sort-of Jewish, kind-of-sort-of Italian, sort of from the South, and sort of a deli … it blends, borrows and steals from all these classic ideas.” The pastrami and corned beef (your choice) are smoked in house for the Reuben, and the bread is a rye specially made by Boulted Bread. The ends of that delicious pastrami get repurposed in a “burnt ends” potato salad that is so good, I didn’t flinch when my daughter ate a bowl of it for breakfast.
(ish) delicatessen
The potato salad, along with other house-made meats and salads, is available by the pound in the deli case, and breakfast is served all day alongside lunch. Like delis of yore, photos of local luminaries line the walls. The counter should lend a strong deli vibe to the spot, but the atmosphere, maybe because of the pharmacy, is decidedly more luncheonette. Or maybe, like the menu, it’s a bit of both.
For Matt, what makes a good sandwich is “condiments. And cheese on both sides of the bread.” He brings that sense of maximalism and experimentation to the classics: the BLT & Blue changes with the seasons, featuring fresh heirloom tomatoes in the summer, fried green tomatoes in the shoulder months, and roasted red ones in the winter, but with a mainstay of blue cheese dressing slathered on both sides. His take on the tuna melt features fish directly from the NC coast via Locals Seafood, smoked in house, then wedged between two slices of sourdough coated with a lemon dill mayo, plus melted Swiss cheese and braised Swiss chard. “It’s as close to perfection as I think exists,” Matt says.
That Swiss chard shows up again as pickled stems that are deep fried and buried beneath layers of melted cheese on the Fried Pickle Grilled Cheese, which is an utterly unique offering. So, too, is my personal favorite, the Beet-Ziki, a grilled cheese with melted dill Havarti and beets that have been roasted and “tzatziki’d.” Inspired by a salad he once had at the now-shuttered Sonoma restaurant SHED, Matt “put it inside of bread.”
You can’t talk about sandwiches in the Triangle and not hear about Durham’s Ideal’s Sandwich and Grocery, which boasts lines around the block for their classic deli sandwiches and is 100 percent worth the hype: Uncle Primo’s Chicken Cutlet on the house-made focaccia is my go-to. Another great spot for sandwiches is Raleigh’s first pay-what-you-can café, A Place at the Table, whose mission helps to combat hunger and food insecurity in our community.
Another of Matt’s irreverent moves is that the breakfast menu features the same sandwich under two different names. File this one under IYKYK, but it’s a New Jersey pork roll that inspires the same amount of conflict as a Duke/Carolina game. Still, for all the ruffled feathers, Matt has created a sandwich spot where everyone can feel comfortable — and find something they want to eat, discovering a new take on an old classic or something entirely new (don’t miss the specials, where Matt’s originality certainly shines).
Sandwiches can be comforting, fun, and inspire hunger, wonder, and nostalgia on the same plate. Some of the sandwiches at Side Street, like a cream cheese and olive one, made me miss my mother-in-law, reminding me of long-ago lunches. The friendly service and community vibe at all three spots made me think about how great it is when someone makes a sandwich for you — especially one so good you couldn’t possibility make it for yourself.
“It’s lunch, not an intellectual endeavor,” says Matt, at the end of our conversation about his inspirations. His quote is a good reminder that the sandwich was made to fill a void in our stomach, not our hearts, but sometimes it’s hard to know the difference.
unionspecialbread.com
sidestreetrestaurantraleigh.com
ishdelicatessen.com
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