The Sandwich Map of America

America argues about a lot of food, but our deepest regional loyalties might belong to sandwiches. Nearly every region has one it considers self evidently the best, made correctly only within about fifty miles of home. Here's the map, and what "correct" means in each place.

The Northeast

Maine owns the lobster roll, split between warm with butter and cold with mayo, both correct, both worth the price when the meat is fresh picked. Philadelphia's cheesesteak is thin sliced ribeye on an Amoroso roll, whiz or provolone, onions or not, and every combination has partisans. New Orleans style delis aside, the Italian hoagie also belongs to Philly, while New England's roast beef sandwiches, especially the North Shore three way with sauce, cheese, and mayo, remain criminally under exported.

The South

New Orleans brings two heavyweights: the po boy, fried shrimp or oysters on impossibly light French bread, dressed with lettuce, tomato, and pickles, and the muffuletta, a round sesame loaf layered with cured meats and olive salad, sold by the quarter because a whole one is a group project. Florida answers with the Cubano: ham, roast pork, Swiss, pickles, and mustard, pressed flat until the bread crackles. Kentucky's Hot Brown is technically open faced and eaten with a fork, but Louisville will not be excluded from this list.

The Midwest

Chicago's Italian beef is thin sliced roast beef soaked in its own gravy on a sturdy roll, ordered dipped if you know what's good for you, with hot giardiniera on top. The loose meat sandwich rules corners of Iowa. Wisconsin counters with the brat on a hard roll, and the entire region shares custody of the fried pork tenderloin sandwich, a dinner plate sized cutlet on a comically small bun, which is exactly the joke and exactly the point.

The West

The French dip was born in Los Angeles, roast beef with a cup of jus for dunking, and two downtown institutions still argue over who invented it. California's other gift is the tri tip sandwich out of Santa Maria, oak grilled beef with salsa on a soft roll. And the West Coast burrito debate aside, the torta, Mexico's pillowy sandwich on telera bread, might be the best value handheld in any western city.

How to eat off this map

Two rules. First, order the sandwich where it lives if you possibly can, because bread doesn't travel and neither does gravy. Second, when you're craving one far from home, search for it by name rather than hoping a deli nearby does it justice. A city usually has one or two transplants doing the real thing, and finding them beats settling every time.