"That looks disgusting, dude," says Sami Cardak, a friend joining me for lunch. Sami opts for the Roast Beef Sammy ("Because my name is Sami," he reasons), while I go for the creation I invented about three decades ago.

I still remember my thinking process as a kid: Why not put chips on a sandwich? When you got two slices of bread with stuff in between, it can only get better if you add other things you like. Ham and cheese? Better with the additional crunch of Fritos or Lay's. Gilly's seems to understand the beauty of this approach to sandwich making. It also sells the "Joey H," which is bologna, cheddar cheese, and potato chips all between two slices of bread.

Eating the Timmy G. is like eating spaghetti and meat sauce with your fingers. Getting it out of the basket is a mess—half the Cheetos fall out—and yet, like a messy hamburger, you can't put the thing down. To eat the beast, you must turn yourself into a fine Swiss engineered instrument used for performing remote neurosurgery on infants still in the womb. Or something like that. One hand must keep track of the Cheetos that drop from your sandwich as the other shoves the monstrous thing into your mouth.

"Why would you eat such a thing. How old are you?" Sami says, shaking his head.

"Younger than you <crunch crunch> and always will be. You're just jealous. <crunch crunch crunch> How's yours?"

Sami likes the Sammy. It comes on a nice looking French baguette and is loaded with roast beef (not as rare as I would like) and crunchy lettuce. For a guy who weighs about 40 pound more than I, he has a hard time finishing it.

The bonus? An employee comes around and puts out a small platter with four apple slices and some chunks of not-too-salty white cheddar. "What's that for?" Sami asks. "It's dessert, you idiot," I retort. The employee smiles as he walks away. Sami digs in, and I urge him to wait, reminding him it's dessert. I get the look that conveys he'll do whatever he damn well wants.

It has always been tough to find a good sandwich in Rockville since Celebrity Deli moved from the area. With Gilly's here, and with Coaches Hoagies Steaks & Pizza offering a good Philly cheesesteak with real Cheese Whiz, things are a changin'. I'll definitely go back to Rockville.

Maybe I'm just paying more attention these days to how restaurants cut costs while still trying to provide a modicum of originality, but recently I've noticed a mini-trend of house-made potato chips.
I first spotted these fried snacks at Hank's Tavern & Eats in Hyattsville, where Chef Geoff's team serves a fairly tame basket of barbecued chips.

But during the holiday break, I ordered a plate of waffle-cut potato chips from the Corner Bistro in McLean, which, despite its name, is a kindly neighborhood wine bar that mixes tapas with a smattering of French country dishes. Don't ask me why such a place serves potato chips, or even why I ordered them, but they do and I did. I regretted it. The chips (pictured above) looked undeniably mouthwatering when the waiter dropped them off, but they were oily, soggy, and under-salted. They had all the crunch of wet cardboard.

A few days later, a friend ordered a barbecue chicken sandwich at Black's Bar and Kitchen in Bethesda, which came with house-made potato chips. The fried potato slices were everything you'd want from a chip: thin, crispy, spuddy, and salty. They were, in fact, far better than the gloppy sandwich, which I have to admit induced a gag reflex on first bite. I won't gross you out with the details on that one.

The menu is also built for comfort, mostly sandwiches, salads, burgers, and a few reasonably priced entrees. There's even a 33-ounce beer stein, priced around $10, to help raise your spirits even as your stocks plummet. But the thing that really caught my eye was the side of barbecued potato chips. The kitchen makes them in house.

The chips are nestled in a paper cone, which itself rests on a metal stand. The thin fried rounds sport nice little air pockets, and the chips crackle loudly when you bite into them. The sound alone is very satisfying. But the most surprising thing about this housemade snack is its flavor, which is decidedly sweet, not hot, as you'd expected from barbecued chips. I asked my server about this, and she reported that the kitchen sprinkles two types of sugar on the chips.

I wouldn't go so far to say that the sweetness ruins the chips, but it does go against your expectations. I'm looking to irritate my tongue. Hank's, for reasons I don't understand, wants to soothe it. After all, even mass-produced barbecue potato chips feature more heat than sweet; for once, Chef Geoff has the marketplace's clear permission to burn up our palates. But even here, the good chef opts to play it safe. He may be the most trustworthy neighborhood restaurateur in D.C., but when it comes to barbecued chips, I'm not looking for Ned Flanders.

There are a flood of flavored chips on the market–potato chips, pita chips, even puffed rice and corn thingies. But do they always taste like the advertised ingredients? In this periodic feature, we'll put the chips to the test. This time we challenge Stacy's Parmesan Garlic and Herb Pita Chips. Here's what the City Paper panel thought they tasted like:

Housing Complex reporter Ruth Samuelson: "Garlic...sorry, that's what it tasted like to me. Maybe 'pizza' flavored?"

Loose Lips Mike DeBonis: "Onion powder and Parmesan. Maybe not even Parmesan."

Senior Writer Jason Cherkis: "Sea salt, sandpaper, tahini or sour cream, boredom."

Staff Photographer Darrow Montgomery: "Minnesotan Italian restaurant's idea of garlic and bread."

Editor Erik Wemple: "All I can taste is garlic."

Managing Editor Andrew Beaujon: "Garlic, onion, and pepper."

Me (yes, I knew the flavors going in, but I still tried to taste them on the palate): "Garlic, salt, and toasted cardboard."

Actual ingredient list: Enriched flour, sunflower oil, Parmesan cheese, sea salt, whole wheat flour, sugar, ground garlic, active yeast, oat fiber, compressed yeast, malted barley flour, inactive yeast, and parsley flakes.