Genova CHM Special #1: It took me 4 years of college to get this thing right

I start out with what I had always considered my favorite deli's: Genova. During college, at least once a week I would go here when hungover and get a sandwich. After numerous trips, I have decided on the sandwich below as my favorite, barely beating out the CHM Special #2 (to be reviewed at a later date. On to the sandwich:






Meat(25):x 18 Prosciutto and Mild Copa, order this sandwich with double meat.

Quality(15):x 12
As you all know I love the cured Italian meats and Genova's has a fine selection. Their prosciutto is flavorful, salty, and delicious. You can tell it is real parma proscut and not that knock-off bullshit stuff that other cheaper delis serve.
The coppa is also solid. Ain't nothing better than solid. It goes well with the prosciutto. I don't get the hot coppa because I think it overpowers the other meat.

Quantity(10): x 6
I order double meat and its a solid amount of cured pork. Close to 2/3 a pound. This sandwich would get like 3 pickles without getting double meat. Stupid deli that weighs stuff.

Bread(20): x 11
Fresh Sourdough. There are two options here, sourdough (which my GF mistakenly got) and the freshly baked sourdough (for 25 cents more who can say no). Bread is good, not great. It isn't warm but you can tell it is fresh. The crust is firm and the inside soft. Overall a good piece of sourdough, not great though.

Value (20): x 6
The base price on this sandwich is $6.75. But it's all the extras that kill the value. Mendocino Mustard 25 cents, fresh sourdough 25 cents, double meat costs a coupla of bucks. At the end the sandwich was around $10 (I am not sure how much it was exactly because I got a bunch of other stuff). Genova's has a weird pricing system. I have been ordering the same sandwich for 6 years and I have never been charged the same price twice. So value this trip: six pickles.

Spread (10): x 8.5
Mendocino Mustard is the reigning best mustard in my opinion and Genova's has it. It is awesome. They also put a pretty light layer of mayo on there. The mustard is perfect and the mayo does its job without doing anything more

Fixings (10):x 6

1. Shredded lettuce
2. peperoncinis
3. Red onion
4. Kosher Pickle slices

The pickle slices here are the real allstars here. Big pickles, great flavor, and copious in amount. Other vegetable offerings are mediocre to sub par.

Cheese:(5): x 4.5
Fresh buffalo mozzarella is awesome. Sooo rich and creamy. And they don't skimp on it either.

Originality (5): x 2.5
Pretty standard Italian sandwich. They do have some special sandwiches that warrant a few points but nothing out of the ordinary really

Sandwich shop/creator (5): x 4
The help here has gotten worse. It used to be a few cute girls and a bunch of old Italian guys making sandwiches. They put time and care into the sandwich and knew that a sandwich aficionado like myself enjoys copious amounts of coppa on my sandwich. Now they have your standard sandwich makers who weigh out the meat and are just grinding away at their 9-5.

The deli its self is solid. Good selection of drinks and other stuff, amazing sides (try the artichoke balls they are the best food on earth)

Total Points: 60.5

All-in-all a poor showing by Genova's. Counter help and the value really killed them. Bread didn't help the cause either. Ms. Honey Mustard enjoyed her sandwich, pictures of her turkey on sourdough below. Notice the lack of cheese and the tomato, we don't share the same sandwich views.

Sandwich: Bread-Meat-Bread, an introduction.

Bread-Meat-Bread. Meet the requirements and you are subject to coverage by my blog. Not Bread-meat-bread? go cry on yelp.com

This blog will be all about rating sandwiches from various locations around the Western United States as well as sandwich related items. What is a sandwich you may ask?


Veggie Sandwiches? Bread -lettuce-Bread. This is not a sandwich, this is a salad served between slices of wheat. Veggie sandwich, go get fucked. You do not belong under the sandwich portion of any restaurant's menu. Stupid glorified, unfulfilling salad .

Hamburgers: ARE-FUCKING-AWESOME. They are so awesome they deserve their own blog. Definitely a sandwich, but this blog will be tailored more narrowly to the traditional sandwich. Hamburgers might possibly be covered in later posts.

Pita Sandwich: This is the dividing point between sandwich and not. Pita is in the sandwich category, wraps are not. Cheap or stale pita bread, when opened up, often splits in two. If someone totally split pita bread in half and served it I would wonder where the pocket properties of my sandwich went. I would assume they were using shitty pita bread. Ruling: Sandwich, but just barely

Wraps: This is a bastardized burrito. You know why burritos are great, because Mexican people don't know what the fuck hummus is. The wrap is basically the vehicle for Hippy-Granola-eaters to wrap up a bunch of shit I would never eat together or separately and pawn it off as something I like. Purveyor of the wrap, you put your hummus and bean sprouts in burrito form, a form synonymous with deliciousness, and try to pass it off as something on par with the burrito? SHAME ON YOU SIRS. Shame on you for your attempts to fool me and shame on your for violating the sanctity that is the burrito form.

How are you going to determine what sandwich is the best?

The answer my friends is science. That's right a scientific rating system globally recognized as the true method of objectively rating a sandwich.

The 100 Pickle Barrel Rating System:

Meat: 25 pickles
Meat is the most important part of the sandwich and thus gets the most points/pickles/whatever. Ever eat lunch meat straight out of the bag? Of course you have. Ever eat a piece of bread straight from the bag? No, you toast that shit and put some peanut butter on it unless you have just eaten a butthole-burning pepper or a crap-ton (equivalent to 1.1 metric tones ) of hot sauce.

The Meat rating (insert penis joke here) will be subdivided into two sub-ratings (sandwich puns are sweet): Quality and Quantity.

Quality of Meat: 15 pickles
A damn tasty meat can carry most sandwiches by itself. I tend to enjoy cured meats,
turkey, actually everything. I just love the taste of meat in my mouth.

Quantity of Meat: 10 pickles
I like meat on my sandwich, a lot of meat in fact. Quantity of meat is based on a sandwich-by-sandwich basis. Sandwich makers should error on the side of too much meat. Quantity of meat is definitely bread dependent. Big piece of bread? You're gonna need a lot of meat.

Bread: 20 pickles
It makes up two thirds of the bread-meat-bread requirements. To be a top notch sandwich, great bread is a must.

Value: 20 pickles
You know what's better than a great sandwich? A great sandwich for $4. I am a student and thus poor. I am also a cheap bastard.

Spread/Lubrication: 10 pickles
I have a long held theory that mayo, cream cheese, and frosting are always overdone. No one (who is under 300 pounds) has once said "Wow, there just isn’t enough mayo on this sandwich." or "Damn they didn't put enough cream cheese on this bagel" (Situations in which you get the useless cream cheese cup not included). No, I always end up scrapping mayo off my sandwich, have cream cheese oozing out the side of the bagel all over my fingers, or gluing party plates together with 18 fucking fork-fulls of frosting from a cheap yellow cake. I digress though, I like a little mayo on my sandwich for some lubrication, I love mustard and flavored mayos, aiolis, and other dressings are the shit.

Fixings: 10 pickles
For lack of a better name, this is the category things like onions, lettuce, avocado, etc fall into.

Tomatoes: This is just a useless confused piece of food. Am I a fruit? Am I a vegetable? YOU ARE WORTHLESS, THAT'S WHAT YOU ARE! You make my sandwich soggy as hell with no redeeming flavor, crunch, or texture. This blog will never mention the quality of a sandwich establishment’s tomatoes because all of Colonel Honey Mustard's sandwiches are ordered sans tomatoes

Organic Sprouts, cucumber, other veggies: Stay off my sandwich!

Cheese: 5 pickles
Cheese is good on a sandwich. It can really make a sandwich but if a sandwich lacks cheese, it is not necessarily detrimental to its cause.

Originality: 5 pickles
New and exciting sandwiches are awesome.

Sandwich Shop/creator: 5 pickles
Is there a long line? Is it in shitty neighborhood? Does it smell bad? Or is the counter girl hot? Is the old guy behind the counter informative and does he inspire Obama-like hope that your sandwich is gonna be awesome?

All these questions will be summarized in this category.

Sandwich Ratings to begin shortly.