He prefers the term "builds," of course. "You always build a sandwich," Cooper tells me, "because people who make sandwiches should just make peanut butter and jelly."

At his Blagden Alley restaurant on Monday night, the Rogue Toque fashioned a makeshift panini press out of a small collection of shiny pots, pans, tin foil—and, at one point, even employed the arms of one of his underlings ("I don't have a brick," he explained)—which he used to construct me a pretty substantial sandwich. It consisted of corned beef, sauerkraut, pork belly, and gruyere, dressed with red wine aioli and creole mustard, all crushed between what appeared to be two thinly breaded loaves of butter. "It's all heart healthy," he jokes.

The name of the sandwich? "Shott in the Heart," he tells me. ("Derek came up with that one," he adds, referring to Rogue 24 bartender Derek Brown.)

An appropriate, if somewhat morbid, moniker, what with the Coop preparing to undergo open-heart surgery the following day.

Still, I was feeling pretty honored by the namesake. At least until fellow food scribe Amanda McClements mentioned that the restaurant has a cocktail named after her, too.

The occasion for this bold display of intricate sandwich-making—er, building: a Gilt City soiree toasting the launch of "Rogue Sessions," a series of guest chef dinners taking place at the restaurant over the next several months while Cooper recovers from his operation. The $185-per-person dinners kick off Tuesday night with Volt's Bryan Voltaggio in the guest slot.

For a guy facing life-threatening health issues, Cooper sure acted good-humored about the whole thing—surreal send-off celebration and all. "It's like when you're in Manhattan and a car flips over and everyone's watching," he tells me while his monstrous sandwich is cooking.

This grand corned beef build-out could be the start of something new for Cooper. The chef tells me he'd like to open his own sandwich shop—one with bread that doesn't rip up the roof of your mouth when you eat it.

Here's to hoping for a successful surgery and speedy recovery, chef, so that your sandwich-making dreams might become a reality.

Fish & chips (the sushi kind) at The Hamilton

The guys at Taylor Gourmet pulled-off a bit of a fast one on Tuesday with an advertised "mayoral ribbon cutting" at their new shop on 14th Street NW. D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray didn't actually attend. Instead, services were conducted by some "mayors" of Foursquare. Whatever the hell that means. “We got a good laugh," co-owner Casey Patten tells Washingtonian.

Now comes word that Clyde's Restaurant Group will be holding its own splashy ribbon-cutting ceremony next week at its new downtown D.C. behemoth, The Hamilton. (Read Y&H's early take here.) Featured speakers include not just the mayor (the real one), but also D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown and Ward2 Councilmember Jack Evans. The ceremony is scheduled for Monday morning, Jan. 9.

City Paper

How will the Vietnamese hoagie fare in 2012? Stick your predictions in the comments.

Photo by Aude/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Photo by BillyTFried/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Readers learned that Sietsema's take down of the Mussel Bar paled in comparison to his trashing of Le Pigalle.

Don Rockwell's budding organization may not have any members yet, or even any services to give them, but  his Association of Independent Restaurants has plenty of reader attention. Presumably AIR has stirred up plenty of industry attention, too.

That's a start.

The Y&H column on Rockwell's embryonic organization beat all comers last week. Take a look at your top five:

1. Independents' Day: Foodie Website Founder Don Rockwell Starts a New Restaurant Association
2. Food News You Can Use: Why Fried Turkeys and Four Lokos Suck
3. Is Tom Sietsema's Review of the Mussel Bar His Harshest on Record?
4. David Guas' Bayou Bakery Set to Open This Month in Arlington
5. Meatless Sandwiches: They Should Be More Than Bread Stuffed with Veggies
   

Sandwiches were simpler when I was young. Turkey and mustard. Roast beef and mustard. Salami and mustard. Sometimes I would sneak a potato chip in between the bread, but that was it. My lunch-time sandwiches consisted of meat plus mustard plus bread. (Actually, I liked my sandwiches on hamburger buns, but that's a different story.)

Things have changed since 5th grade. I eat less meat; in fact, about 85 percent of my meals revolve around non-meat items. However, I don't adhere to a specific regimen, like Meatless Mondays or Mark Bittman's "Vegan till 6."

I'm lucky to live in a city that offers a decent amount of vegetarian options. However, I'm still struggling to find the veggie sandwich.

For lunch this week, I grabbed a sandwich at The Daily Market on Connecticut Avenue and L Street NW. I had approximately seven minutes to snag sustenance and jump to a conference call, so I decided quickly on the Mediterranean Midday: hummus slathered on both sides of pumpernickel, with chunks of artichoke hearts, wedges of avocado, slices of red onion and cucumbers, and a tumbleweed of sprouts. I omitted the tomato because — who are we kidding? — it'd taste like mush this time of year. Instead, I requested spicy mustard. (I haven't kicked all my 5th grade habits.)

The sandwich measured an inch and a half too high for my mouth, ensuring the contents would fall out. Luckily, I remembered to hit the mute button before I cursed that damned faux-briny artichoke heart. And the taste = meh. It was fine but didn't excite me. Unfortunately, this unsatisfied sentiment fills me after most veggie sandwiches.

Do veggie sandwiches try too hard? Do we really need that many vegetables in between two slices of bread? Can a veggie sandwich succeed with a limited number of ingredients?

Someone, please, point me in the direction of a streamlined veggie sandwich.

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Few restaurants have the pedigree of Locolat, yet the place barely rates more than a passing reference from most professional palates, as if we can’t be bothered with a mere chocolate shop that caters to a lunchtime crowd with a line of humble sandwiches. But let’s review the facts: Owner Niel Piferoen has studied with, or worked for, some of the best culinary minds anywhere, including Michel Richard at Citronelle and Cathal Armstrong at Restaurant Eve. He’s also toiled at the Michelin three-star restaurant De Karmeliet in Belgium. His own place channels not only his experiences but also those of his father, a former executive chef for the Belgian embassy, who can be seen in the kitchen here. Locolat’s chocolates and pastries speak for themselves, though I would like to make a special mention of Piferoen’s intricate rectangles of puff pastry called carré confiture, so elegant with their stretched stained-glass patterns offering a window onto a sweet-tart apricot (or orange) filling. But the real find here is the surprisingly expansive menu of sandwiches and panini, which are built on minibaguettes that Piferoen buys parbaked from Le Nôtre, one of the great bakeries in Paris. I’ve fallen hard for Piferoen’s rail-thin runway model of a panini layered with salami, aged Belgian goat cheese, and arugula. Its half-baked baguette is brought to life not in an oven but on a press, which warms, crisps, and chars the exterior while leaving the interior nice and chewy, the perfect complement to the velvety ingredients stuffed inside. There are many more excellent sammies where this one came from, too.

1781 Florida Ave. NW (202) 518-2570

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

After taking a trip to Chicago this winter, Taylor Gourmet co-owner Casey Patten wanted to create his own Italian beef sandwich for his budding Philly-in-exile empire. There was only one problem.

Patten's version of the Second City staple "wasn't very successful," Patten recalls. "I didn't like the way it turned out."

So he turned away from the Italian sandwich tradition altogether and looked instead to Britain for inspiration for another classic bite: roast beef. He spent more than two months, off and on, working on his recipe for Taylor's new "Cherry Street" sandwich, trying to determine the right combination of flavors that wouldn't be dominated by the hearty, sesame-studded Sarcone's roll that Taylor trucks in daily from Philly.

Patten tried a number of different cuts until he settled on choice-grade top round. He takes a knife and creates some deep wells in the meat, into which he stuffs at least 20 cloves of garlic,  many buried deep within the muscle. He also drizzles a combination of olive and vegetable oils into those wells. After seasoning with salt and pepper and sprinkling with hot pepper flakes, Patten will roast the beef until it reaches an internal temperature of 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

When it emerges from the oven, the cut sports a rosy shade of pink in the interior. Patten calls it medium-rare or "just enough [red] not to scare people away." (See the picture below.)

For toppings and condiments, Patten didn't want to follow any well-worn path. He didn't want horseradish sauce or Provolone cheese or Dijon mustard for his roast beef. Instead, for his cheese, Patten opted for a Normandy double cream brie, and then devised his own condiment, a roasted garlic spread that's closer in spirit to his Italian sandwich concept than either horseradish or Dijon mustard.

The spread is a smooth, blended combination of roasted garlic, vegetable oil, olive oil, salt, hot cherry peppers, and some of the brine that the peppers are packed in. It's sort of Patten's answer to a common question at Taylor: Where's the mayo?

The roasted-garlic spread is essential to balancing out the big fatty flavors of the roast beef and brie. The roll is already a lusty piece of bread, and when stuffed with layers of shaved beef and thick hunks of brie, it really needs something sharp to poke through all those low-rumbling bass notes of meat and cream. Taylor's other sandwiches rely on sharp provolone or roasted red peppers or even sun-dried tomatoes to perform this task; the Cherry Street relies on its roasted garlic spread, with its warm, welcoming overtones of acidic hot pepper.

The first time I sampled the Cherry Street, I found the balance of flavors tilting too much toward the cow-end of the spectrum. The finishing drizzle of oil only intensified the sandwich's feeling of heaviness. My second tasting, however, was spot on. Patten had added more of the spread and perhaps even a few more leaves of arugula to intensify its peppery bite. Sure, the sandwich oozed liquid now, but the extra toppings turned a decent roast beef sandwich into a terrific one.

The Cherry Street debuts today at Taylor Gourmet. It'll run you $7.10 for a six-inch sandwich, and $9.10 for 12 inches.