All the Sand which Is There

I tend not to order sandwiches when I eat out, unless it's something I can't make myself at home. Still, it amazes me that I get so surprised and pleased by the variation I find in meat on bread.

All cultures have their own bread, be it raised (sandwich, French, etc.) or unleavened (matzoh, pita, tortilla). You can even see different cultures or countries with variations on pancakes (crepes, blintzes, latkes). So, then, why am I astounded that each culture has its own type of sandwich?

I enjoy egg sandwiches. When I was little, I would always order a fried egg sandwich at Olga's Diner (Marlton, NJ). Every time I eat breakfast at McDonald's (rarely), I'll order an Egg McMuffin. Whenever I go to Denny's, I order their Moons over My Hammy (and not just for the name). There's just something special about egg, meat, and cheese between two slices of bread.

Even at Mexican restaurants, I order sandwich-like items. Burritos (for those readers who don't know, it's something rolled in a flour tortilla) are basically a tubular sandwich. I prefer gorditas (Note: not the Taco Bell variant, which is merely a taco with a soft, flour tortilla encasing the hard, corn one) or stuffed sopaipillas, usually at Roberto's (Las Cruces, NM), Chope's (La Mesa, NM), or the Red Rooster Cafe (Anthony, TX). All of these are basically meat and bread, but how imaginative the simple sandwich has become!

Yesterday, Worker Bee and I had to eat lunch at a different restaurant, since the Red Rooster was closed for vacation. I won't name the place because, even though the food was decent, it wasn't good, and the service was terrible. What I really didn't like was the way I felt after ordering. First, the woman behind the counter seemed to think I was beneath her because English is my first language. Second, I was confused because they offered half a dozen choices of fillings for my gorditas, whereas my usual restaurants offer only ground beef. The cashier thought I was stupid because she thought everyone knew they had a choice. When I told her I wanted "hamburger" (i.e. ground beef) in my gordita, she thought I was ordering a hamburger as well. I also had a choice of corn masa (ground corn) or flour (ground wheat, since I'm being pedantic) for the gordita itself. I chose the masa because that's all that my usual restaurants serve. By this time, both the cashier and I were so tense, I didn't even order a Dr. Pepper to drink. That was okay, though, because the soda dispenser was out of order anyway. I felt like the world's biggest gringo. Then, I sat and waited and watched Worker Bee eat his burrito because, even though he ordered after I did, it takes far longer to make three gorditas from scratch than to slop a ready-made filling into a ready-made tortilla. (That was the silver lining to the restaurant's cloud: the gorditas weren't just sitting on a steam table, waiting to be filled.)

Worker Bee was far more successful ordering, but he did have one problem. When he ordered water (agua), he was given a cup and pointed to a plastic vat of liquid and ice. It didn't look like water to me. Since when is water white? Worker Bee (born and raised in this area of Hispanic culture) discovered that agua must mean horchata to whoever operates the restaurant, not water. That would also explain why he was charged $1.65 for a cup of water.

Side note: the hand-written menu (on fluorescent poster board tacked on the wall) was entirely in Spanish. I was able to translate most of it, even tocino (bacon), although Worker Bee had to explain that winnie is a hot dog (I guess the Mexican pronunciation of "weenie").