Bunk Sandwiches

There's an app for that.

Food Network has a new app.  It's called "On the Road" and, among other things I have yet to research, it allows you to search by location for restaurants nearby that have been featured on Food Network shows.  I need to see if there is something similar with Top Chef, but until then, this has already proven to be a useful tool.

A while back I watched an episode of The Best Thing I Ever Ate that sang the praises of pork belly Cubano in Portland, OR.  I made a mental note that if we were ever in Portland, we would stop by.  One, it's pork belly.  And it is almost impossible to mess up pork belly (one unfortunate experience ruins the universal truth).  Two, well, it's a Cuban sandwich.  And that is probably the greatest love of the critic.

This weekend I found myself in Portland.  I was at a convention where I opted to NOT pay the additional $10 for a box lunch.  Oh what good planning on my part!  Thanks to my handy-dandy phone app, I learned that Bunk Sandwiches is a mere 1.1 miles from my exact location!  Guess what?  I can walk a mile for a sandwich (and I can walk a mile back too... which is good because, well, it's pork belly and swiss and ham and bread a bunch of other things on the not-approved eating list).  And that pork belly Cubano rings it at $8 or $9 and is more food than I could finish... so it just made good economic sense as well.

So I left the convention a teensy bit early for lunch, in case there was a line (there wasn't).  It's not in the "best" part of Portland but it was safe enough to walk alone and it was a GORGEOUS day so that really can't be beat.  And well, the sandwich, it was worth walking much further than 1 mile for.

I purchased two.  One for me, and one for The Critic to eat once I got home that night.  I remembered his without mayo.  It was a DELICIOUS sandwich.  I'll have to watch the show again to figure out what the smokey hit that came on occasion was.  And to see if Chris Cosentino ordered it with the housemade cherry peppers (I didn't... but really thought about it).  And there will be a repeat performance... only next time it will be on a Portland trip with The Critic.  He deserves to enjoy that sandwich the way it was intended and not reheated 9 hours later in the microwave.  Though he will be the first to tell you it was still delicious and well worth it.