Willow Wood Market, 9020 Graton Road, Graton. Matthew Greenbaum, its creator, says, “I usually don’t like eggplant, but I love this sandwich.” Potato salad, olives and pickles come with the plate. Then it’s roasted in the oven on a pizza stone until the cheese melts and the flavors combine. The chef spreads pesto on one slice, the garlic mayonnaise on the other, with the eggplant and red peppers layered one on top of another with French feta as the final addition. The bread, from the Village Bakery in Sebastopol, is fresh and thinly sliced. Sliced and tossed with olive oil, it’s roasted on a cookie sheet in a hot oven until caramelized. Still, it’s the eggplant that makes this sandwich a legend beyond Graton. After all, it’s made with eggplant, skinned and roasted red peppers, feta, walnut pesto and homemade roasted-garlic mayonnaise. The hot eggplant sandwich at the Willow Wood looks like a veritable vegetarian’s delight. Noodle Bowl, 821 Russell Ave., Santa Rosa. Bring your friends who’ve never heard of banh mi, and blow their minds. A Cousteaux Bakery roll is the perfect finishing touch, and even as we’ve watched its price rise from $3 to $4, and now $5, it’s still a worthy lunchtime detour. A staple of Vietnamese street food, banh mi are compact and filling, and Noodle Bowl’s version hosts carrots, cilantro, cucumber, daikon, mayonnaise and your choice of BBQ pork, beef, chicken or tofu. There are plenty of Cambodian dishes at play here, but the banh mi’s the thing. Where do legends live? Tucked next to a Laundromat in the back of a grimy strip mall on an awkward side street near the family courthouse? If you’re talking about the legend that is Noodle Bowl’s banh mi, then look no further. Redd Wood, 6755 Washington St., Yountville. Reddington cranks up the pig factor by stacking well-crisped chunks of wonderfully fatty pork belly along with a tart-sweet tomato marmalade and a buttery, crunchy handful of pale green inner romaine leaves between a perfectly toasted ciabatta roll amply covered with mayonnaise. Bacon, as I’m sure you know, is made from sliced pork belly. The restaurant serves wood-fired pizzas and other Italian-inspired dishes, but on a recent visit, it was the pork belly BLT that caught my eye. Redd Wood in Yountville is the new restaurant from Richard Reddington, owner of Redd, also in Y-Town. Isn’t that what a sandwich should do? Ray’s Deli, 900 Western Ave., Petaluma. These sandwiches are a treat, a reward for a job well done or just a congratulations for making it halfway through the workday. This is no five-dolla footlong, because unlike a certain corporate chain deli’s flavorless dreck, it actually tastes like something (and it’s a little more than $5). The Ray’s roll, baked each morning, is soft and light, highlighting the flavors it is sworn to protect. Free-range chicken, real, thick-cut bacon, red pepper aioli, fresh lettuce, ripe tomato and fresh-sliced cheese. But when each ingredient is pushed to its best, the results are phenomenal. Seemingly simple: diced chicken breast, bacon, mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato and cheese. A variety of staples created by a couple of Cotati foodies who took their culinary curiosity out of the kitchen and into the storefront continuously elevates the sandwich to the level of gourmet cuisine. There are many reasons to visit this off-the-strip deli and tavern, but the sandwiches could be number one. This cross-section view should always be a visually stunning work of art, and Ray’s Deli in Petaluma showcases that ideal. All for a pile of stuff smashed between two pieces of bread!Ī sandwich really becomes a sandwich when sliced in half to reveal its layers of hidden goodness. The funny thing about all this is that once we got going, we could have written about five times as many sandwiches, easily. You’ll notice we haven’t forgotten the turkey-and-swiss corner store creations, but we’re glad to share plenty of new discoveries, too, geared to inspire special out-of-the-way detours with friends. Especially here in the North Bay, where fresh, local ingredients are simply grace notes in a chef’s sonata, sandwiches have undergone a makeover that’s caused the rest of the country to put down their PB&Js and take notice.įor this year’s Food & Wine issue, we’ve rounded up some of our favorites out of the literally thousands of sandwiches in the North Bay. There’s been a rush of innovation between the bread that nobody, not even John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich himself, could have expected. And why not? They’re compact, manageable, easy to eat and offer endless variations for a quick lunchtime grab.īut something’s been happening to sandwiches lately. For what’s basically a pile of stuff smashed between two pieces of bread, sandwiches sure are a huge part of our lives.
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