The Spicy P, a chicken parm sandwich dressed in vodka sauce, at the new West Hollywood location of Ggiata.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
9 great new sandwiches to try in Los Angeles
Sandwiches are like one of the year’s best picture Oscar contenders: Everything, everywhere, all at once. Within a recent 24-hour span, I admired the contrast of soft-scrambled eggs and spicy-sweet fried chicken on a brunch sandwich at Distrito Catorce, where Jonathan Perez has a residency for his Macheen pop-up, and debated on a rainy night whether I liked the chicken parm or meatball parm more at the new Ggiata location in West Hollywood. I thought then that it made sense to push myself into looking for more newish sandwiches, from freshly minted operations to the latest creations from places that have been settling in for a year or two.
What did I find? A reminder that the universal medium of sandwiches helped the food industry refocus and reinvent itself in the pandemic afterquakes. And that, as always, sandwiches are windows into the nostalgic past (New Jersey and New York deli inspiration emerged as a recurring theme) and foundations for original creative expression. These are nine new favorites, alphabetized by restaurant rather than ranked.
Showing Places
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Chopped cheese at Bodega Park
Silver Lake Sandwich Shop
Chopped cheese — often shortened to “chop cheese” — is a sandwich most strongly associated with an East Harlem deli that currently operates under the name Blue Sky but has been informally known as Haji’s for years. A burger patty hits the griddle and, as it sizzles, a cook minces the meat with onions and cheese into a rubbly, half-molten hash. It lands on a hero roll, dressed with the usual burger trimmings. Eric Park draws on memories of his days in New York and does the chopped cheese proud. It’s listed on the morning menu of his daytime restaurant and coffee shop but stands its ground among soppressata on baguette with fontina and artichokes and other Italian-inflected sandwiches. Park has operated in the same Silver Lake space for a decade; he and his wife, Miriam, briefly switched to serving poke bowls and other Hawaiian-inspired foods during the pandemic before veering back to sandwiches, versions of which he’d served under his Black Hogg business umbrella. This is for a different list, but heads up that Bodega Park’s breakfast burrito filled with grilled chicken marinated in aji amarillo is superb.
Route Details
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Mozzarella at Bread Head
Santa Monica Sandwich Shop
Jordan Snyder and Alex Williams cooked at Trois Mec, helping Ludo Lefebvre pull off combinations like honey-lacquered duck sauced in squid ink and foie gras butter and served over shiso-scented eggplant. Creating odd, ultimately appealing mashups is a skill that translates winningly to sandwiches. Trois Mec closed in July 2020, and a year later, Snyder and Williams debuted Bread Head, a sandwich pop-up centered on a recipe they developed for lofty, crisp-soft focaccia. The pair plan to open their first stand-alone Bread Head location in 2023, but they currently serve sandwiches on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at JuneShine, a high-design hard kombucha bar in — where else? — Santa Monica. They frequently rotate specials (I hope they bring back the riff on Philly-style roast pork with rapini), but a consistent favorite is simply called “Mozzarella.” Lobes of fresh cheese form the base for ripe sliced avocado and an opulently thick za’atar spread. Alfalfa sprouts are among the most tired of the California culinary cliches, but here their rustling crunch is the exact right foil to balance the creaminess of the other star ingredients. Pickled onions cut the richness too.
Route Details
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Tuna at Bub and Grandma’s
Glassell Park Bakery Sandwich Shop
I am generally not a fan of iceberg lettuce on sandwiches (its watery crunch wheedles into every bite; I’d rather eat a wedge salad separately), nor of the metallic fishiness of tuna salad. The tuna sandwich at Andy Kadin’s breakfast and lunch restaurant is an all-around exception. Note its side profile to admire the structural masterminding by chef Zach Jarrett. The hunk of lettuce acts as box springs for the yielding bed of tuna salad. Spears of red onion and thinly sliced bread-and-butter pickles bring in extra crunch and crucial sharpness in flavor. Homemade mayo makes an honest, velvety difference in the dilled tuna. Toasted brioche provides the framework. This is but one reason to love Bub and Grandma’s, a name that has been synonymous with arguably the finest bread in Los Angeles for the last half-decade. After beginning his wholesale business in 2015, Kadin opened his first restaurant in Glassell Park in September. It’s already a citywide destination for egg sandwiches in the morning, with a lunchtime selection that harkens to Italian and Jewish delis in New Jersey, where both Kadin and Jarrett were raised. Expect at least a short wait for a table.
Route Details
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
The Spicy P at Ggiata
West Hollywood Deli Sandwich Shop
Max Bahramipour, Jack Biebel and Noah Holton-Raphael — three friends who grew up in Montclair, N.J. — began a delivery business in 2020 making sandwiches that channeled their collective nostalgia for the Italian delis they loved as kids. Ggiata opened its first small storefront in the Melrose Hill section of Hollywood in 2021; in November, the partners opened a second, slightly larger location in the West Hollywood space originally occupied by Irv’s Burgers. Sandwiches run the gamut of Italian American flavors you’d hunger for during a multiseason binge of “The Sopranos”: prosciutto, pesto, meatballs, roasted red peppers, red wine and balsamic vinaigrette, tomatoes in every imagined form. There are two versions of chicken parm on seeded baguette. I lean to the one covered in spicy vodka sauce, which adds a ripple of heat, but its splash of cream nicely mellows the pesto and grated Romano. I should also mention the Turk, a creation of herbed roast turkey, Swiss, bacon, sliced tomato and avocado on ciabatta. I took it home and heated it (minus shredded lettuce) for lunch the next day, and it was excellent, with a pleasant, nondisruptive sweetness that came from mostarda and Duke’s mayo.
Route Details
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Fried chicken at Macheen/Distrito Catorce
Boyle Heights Breakfast/Brunch
At Deysi Serrano’s Milpa Grille in Boyle Heights, Jonathan Perez continues his weekday taqueria residency, serving sculptural tacos and some of the most precisely engineered breakfast burritos in the city. In the fall, Perez began a second collaboration a mile away at Distrito Catorce, a restaurant and bar with a stunning view of downtown on its block of 1st Street. Perez ventures into brunch territory here; the menu includes horchata French toast and a burger smothered in truffle gravy. I’m here for the fried chicken sandwich; the bird glosses in a mix of honey and salsa macha, crowned with cheesy soft-scrambled eggs and perched on a bun spread with garlic aioli. It rouses the taste buds , and a cafe de olla from Cafe Cafe Mobile, which also serves coffee at Milpa Grille, will wake you up the rest of the way.
Route Details
The French Philly at Maciel’s Plant-Based Butcher and Deli, a riff on a Philly cheesesteak made with seasoned seitan and black beans mixed with grilled onions, mushrooms, jalapenos and vegan provolone.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
The French Philly at Maciel’s Plant-Based Butcher and Deli
Highland Park Vegan Butcher Shop Deli
The menu is full of words like turkey, pastrami, salami, tuna and crab cakes, but the dishes conceived by Maciel Bañales Luna are entirely vegan. With an education in nutrition and health sciences, Bañales Luna was a fellow at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York before she and her husband, Joe Egender, relocated to Los Angeles. They opened Maciel’s in Highland Park in June, serving her herbivorous takes on reubens, Italian hoagies and pulled pork sandwich. The riff on a Philly cheesesteak debuted in November — a savory textured jumble that includes grilled onions, mushrooms, jalapeños and vegan provolone melted to a consistency that appropriately recalls Cheez Whiz. The “steak” mingles chopped, seasoned seitan and black beans. Take it from someone who loves excellent plant-based cooking but has mixed feelings about meat substitutes: The combination transcends any notion of mimicking beef. It is just plainly delicious.
Route Details
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Yogi Pear at Monroe Place
Culver City Sandwich Shop
Sara Fakhfouri and Alex Maj named their Culver City sandwich shop after the address of their last apartment before moving west — a return home for Fakhfouri, who grew up in Torrance. Their selection of 10 or so cold sandwiches slowly revolves; I’m drawn to the ones that make subtle use of seasonal fruit. During their fall moment, persimmons appeared in crisp-soft slivers between burrata and jamón serrano, with mint vinaigrette and pomegranate molasses that hinted wonderfully at the Iranian flavors of Fakhfouri’s culinary heritage. Currently, the couple are making a variation that rejiggers a pear and gorgonzola salad with ham, arugula and dressing of balsamic glaze and walnut honey mustard stacked high on Bub and Grandma’s focaccia. Over the winter chill, I’m already dreaming of how they might weave summer peaches into one of their bready towers.
Route Details
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Thai-nomite khao soi brisket dip sandwich at Open Market
Koreatown Sandwich Shop Wine Shop
At this Koreatown market and deli, chefs Ralph Hsiao and Andrew Marco construct sandwiches built on their interpretations of quintessential Los Angeles flavors. A vegan take on al pastor features grilled oyster mushrooms and pickled pineapple, while pickled radish, shredded gim, burdock root and perilla infuse tuna salad with Korean-inspired umami. They gravitate to twists on the French dip; the best is their latest creation: kerchiefs of brisket, pickled cabbage, red onion, cilantro and fried shallots stacked snugly enough between slices of baguette. It all holds together as you dip halves of the sandwich in a bowl of curried coconut-milk broth made in the style of lemongrass-fragrant khao soi. While you wait, take in the shelves full of enticements — wines with detailed descriptions in a spectrum of prices, tinned seafood, chocolates, a global array of condiments — curated by husband-and-wife co-founders Brian and Yoonna Lee.
Route Details
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Sabich at Vicky’s All Day
West Adams Mediterranean Breakfast/Brunch Wine Bars
True to its name, Danny Elmaleh’s second casual West Adams restaurant — he and his wife, Justine, also operate Mizlala right around the block — serves dawn-to-dark menus, from lox and chilaquiles in the morning to pizzas and mezze plates through lunch and dinner. Somewhere in the middle is the sabich, Elmaleh’s variation on a sandwich with Jewish-Iraqi origins that’s a staple in Israel, where Elmaleh was raised. Brined and fried slices of eggplant, chopped tomato and cucumber salad, sliced egg and slaw tangled with amba (mango pickle) and tahini arrive crammed into a yawning round of pita. Fries come on the side, but in the sabich’s whirl of shifting textures and bright, earthy flavors they may wind up overlooked.
Route Details
Eat your way across L.A.
Get our weekly Tasting Notes newsletter for reviews, news and more.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
