Breakfast Sandwiches #155 & #156 - Lab Report Or Perhaps A Love Letter

Sandwich: Lab Sandwich #155 - English Muffin, Egg, Bacon, American Cheese, Spicy Chili Crisp.
Date: February 13, 2020

Sandwich: Lab Sandwich #156 - Sourdough, Eggs, Bacon, American Cheese, Deli Deluxe Sharp Cheddar, Avocado, Spicy Chili Crisp
Date: February 27, 2020

I guess I'm late to the party for the Lao Gan Ma Spicy Chili Crisp Cult. I'm no fan of cults but I enjoy a nice party and the party is here, right here on my taste buds. The party rages and shows no signs of abetting. The neighbors can call the cops, who cares? We'll greet them on the front lawn and fling forkfuls of Spicy Chili Crisp in their direction and soon they'll join us and we'll make them a breakfast sandwich laden with Spicy Chili Crisp and after one big bite they'll let me take their guns and blast holes in the ceiling while we dance about and yell like idiots.

I don't know why I'm blasting holes in the ceiling of my kitchen. I guess this is cultish behavior after all.


This review was meant to be a love letter to Spicy Chili Crisp and it was easier to post it here than to actually mail it to:

Guiyang Nanming Laoganma Special Flavour Foodstuffs Co., LTD.
138-15 Jianlong Road, Longdongbao
Guiyang City, Guizhou 550012

I may still send them a postcard. My original plan for this review was to take one of the all-time great love letters and alter it to be about Spicy Chili Crisp but it seemed too (A) difficult, (B) confusing and (C) creepy (somehow):

‘My Own Condiment, Your flavour is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red-rose chili flakes of yours should be made no less for the madness of noodles and broccoli than for the madness of sandwiches. Your slim gilt soul is the flavour between passion and poetry.’

See what I mean? (Stolen from the letter of Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas). Honestly, I like it, but it's still kind of weird.

Also, "Foodstuffs" is my new favorite word and I may start adding it to the end of every restaurant I mention. "OK, cool, I'll meet you at Los Gamelos Foodstuffs at 7".

This is what we're talking about. I'm getting Lao Gan Ma's face and apron tattoed on my neck next week.

Here is a little background on this sauce. The formatting of that page is horrific but it'll give you a good history of this foodstuff, if you care about that. From what I can tell she is the Chinese equivalent of Aunt Jemima and the Quaker Oats guy and Uncle Ben and Tony The Tiger all wrapped into one.

But you probably don't care about any of that.

You just want to know how it tastes and nothing I say here will truly elucidate the matter. But that won't stop me from saying it's oily, garlicky, crispy, spicy (but not overly so) and rich. My favorite word to describe it though is "earthy". Yeah, earthy. I'm not even going to try to explain that, you'll just have to try it for yourself. Rather than read about my sandwiches you should already be on your way to the Asian Market (or for my Asian readers, "The Market") to get some of this stuff.

So, what's all this about? It's about how this condiment pairs so perfectly with chicken egg. That's what we set out to research with these sandwiches and you can already tell how well it went.

It's so cute.

Overcooked the egg a bit but you can see that spicy chili crisp creeping out and that is VERY exciting.

The Sandwich - English Muffin, Egg, Bacon, American Cheese, Spicy Chili Crisp. A classic breakfast sandwich combination now enhanced by Spicy Chili Crisp. It's a full, wide flavor (which sounds like I'm describing some new kind of Marlboro, but I'm not.) The egg was not as runny as I would have liked it but I wasn't worried about it on this day. The sandwich was fantastic but I knew I had to try it in a different configuration.

 You can see the Spicy Chili Crisp lurking beneath the perfectly ripe avocado. The top piece of bread holds my last slice of Deli Deluxe Cheddar Kraft Single and a slice of Kraft American Cheese.

Terrible photo of yolky deliciousness.

 The Sandwich - Sourdough Bread, Egg, Bacon, American Cheese, Deli Deluxe Sharp Cheddar, Avocado, Spicy Chili Crisp. I had one slice of the Deli Deluxe Cheddar left but I didn't think that was enough so I added an American Single. This was my only misstep on this sandwich, I think when it combined with the sourdough it made it just a bit gummy on the palate. Otherwise, this might be the best breakfast sandwich I've ever made. The Spicy Chili Crisp and the avocado paired perfectly with the chicken eggs, cheese and bacon and I don't have anything else to say about this sandwich other than when I took the first big bite I loudly proclaimed "Holy Fuck That Is Tasty". Can I get a witness?

I remember it fondly.
Instagram
Twitter
Facebook page

Breakfast Sandwich #135 - Caracas Empanadas aka Are You Ready For Indoctrination?

Sandwich: Breakfast Empanada
Location: Caracas Empanadas
Date: May 11, 2019
Cost: $3

A trip to the Capitol Square for the Farmers Market means you will have breakfast options out the wazoo and even if you narrow it down to sandwiches you'll still have some tough choices to make. My initial thought was to hit Gotham Bagels again, but I just went there in March and they are already in the Top 25 from both visits. 

We stopped an Ancora Coffee so I would have a coffee to occupy my attention while shuffling around the square at a pace more suited to an octogenarian. As tempting as the Sausage Jalapeño Egg Sandwich was, I had to keep moving. I tucked that morsel away in case I needed a post-shuffle sandwich. That sandwich sounds worthy of a focused return trip so don't be surprised if it shows up here in the coming weeks.

Just as we prepared to join the masses I saw the Caracas Empanadas cart at the corner of King and Main Streets. Wrap that potential in pastry dough and fry it cause I'm interested!

The Caracas Empanadas cart doesn't have a proper web site but I did snap a photo of the menu board, for once.

There they are, nestled side by each. The sauce on the left is the guasacaca sauce that everyone is going bonkers over if you look up the Yelp reviews. It's also really fun to say guasacaca.  On the right is the pique sauce which I preferred.

At the heart of the matter are chicken eggs. 

The Sandwich - Breakfast Empanada. These are premade and ready to go so there are no options. Organic scrambled eggs, Nueske's bacon and cheese. I didn't know about the cult following the guasacaca sauce has until I started doing research for this review but it's a real thing. I tried both sauces and ended up using more of the pique. It's a habanero sauce listed as a medium heat but it's a bit deceptive. It starts off mild, builds quickly and then trails off. I thought it paired with the eggs perfectly but there is something about chicken eggs and hot sauce that really works for me. It's downright magical but go ahead and get all looney for the guasacaca if that's your scene, man. The eggs are scrambled and fluffy and are the predominant flavor here, other than the fried dough. The bacon and cheese get a bit lost among everything else. I'm not even sure what cheese was in here, it was probably a white cheese?

The Result - 3.8 Sauce Cults out of 5 Sauce Cults. This was wonderfully delicious little pocket of flavor and for $3 it's a damn good deal. It's enough to give you some fuel for the market but leaves for room for additional snacking, which is important. The dough held a bit too much of the fried grease flavor and that kept me from falling in love with. I also would have liked more bacon and cheese but for $3 this is a nice little grab and go sandwich. No, an empanada is not a sandwich. Nobody cares.

Instagram
Twitter
Facebook page