Not the world’s only sandwich
We’ve written occasional text about Loaf Lounge, which is an okay café with peaceful vibes that makes good-enough bread and excellent pastry that also happens to be 500 feet away from my house. Loaf Lounge would fail anywhere else because the cafés are better everywhere else, with better food, longer hours, and no lines. But Loaf Lounge is here, within the current structural apocalypse, and so we accepted it, at least for now.
I believed a lot of things about Loaf Lounge, but that was all before Fancy Ham 2.0 came along. Fancy Ham 2.0 is Loaf Lounge’s newest sandwich. Fancy Ham 2.0 contains pistachio pesto, serrano, anchovy aioli, manchego, arugula, and two slices of flash-fried apricot-thyme sourdough. Fancy Ham 2.0 is also a nigh-unconditonal masterpiece. I know good when I see it, and Fancy Ham 2.0 is very, very good, friends. It is sweet, savory, funky, and bright. It should not exist in this country, and it should definitely not be only $15, but here we are.
To the best of my knowledge, there was no Fancy Ham 1.0. Perhaps it was a prototype, something now lost to time. When I rhapsodized about Fancy Ham 2.0 to the staff, they were like “oh yeah, we know it’s the best thing we’ve ever made.”
“Yes, but I’ve been coming here since day 0.”
“That is also true.”
I go home, walk the dog past a friend’s house, and they’re hanging with a few folks on their front porch. I, a normal person, instantly proceed to yell about Fancy Ham 2.0. “Oh, we know. It’s unbelievable. I get one every week now.” We exist in a transformed world because of Fancy Ham 2.0.
I think back to the sandwich, that sandwich, the one that made me known for reviewing sandwiches, I guess. Fancy Ham 2.0 is not unlike it. In fact, if you replace the focaccia with sourdough and cut the pesto, it’s basically the same. So there’s something to be said about my affinity for sandwiches that are like this, just done a little differently somewhere else, somewhere right next to my home.
On the one hand, I now live in fractal societal collapse. But on the other hand, I have the opportunity, five days a week, to eat a convincing simulation of the best sandwich of my life for lunch. It has pesto.