Just Some Foc'in Sandwiches
In which I'm looking for the best sandwich in town made from focaccia, schiacciata, or pizza bianca.
Let’s start with these three sandwich breads - focaccia, schiacciata, and pizza bianca. Most of us are familiar with two of them. Focaccia is a light, airy, spongy bread originally, I believe, from Liguria. It’s usually somewhat tall - anywhere from 1-2 inches. The dough contains a large amount of moisture - 80% hydration is common. That’s a percentage, for those who aren’t into baking, of water to flour - so if you’ve got a pound of flour, 16 ounces, you’d use 12.8 ounces of water, roughly. By comparison, classic sandwich breads, baguettes, challah, have around 60% hydration, and it’s the steam created by the extra water in the dough that creates all those bubbles and airiness in a focaccia. The dough also contains a significant amount of olive oil - about 4-5% by weight again - so in our hypothetical dough just above, that’d be about 1.5 tablespoons, though I’ve seen recipes that go up to 6-7%. Typically, focaccia also has coarse salt sprinkled over the top, and often herbs or aromatic vegetables.
Schiaccata (a.k.a. "ciaccia" or "schiaccia”, and literally meaning “squashed”) is a Tuscan bread that’s similar. But, it’s not as light and fluffy, and usually has a much crunchier crust. Its hydration level is typically, especially for the sort used to make sandwiches, not much higher than “standard” bread - usually around 65-70%. There’s less, if any, olive oil in the dough, and it rarely has anything sprinkled or embedded on its upper surface.
And, finally, pizza bianca, which I think of as a particularly Roman thing. We all kind of know it from getting baskets of “pizza bread” at Italian restaurants outside of Italy - sometimes with a little cheese on its surface. In Rome, it’s simply pizza dough, often made in big rectangular sheet pans, and cut into smaller rectangles that are eaten as a snack, or sliced and filled. Hydration here is in between the two above, usually somewhere in the 70-75% range, with a small amount of olive oil in it.
This quest was inspired by a recent sandwich that I posted about in the last Bite Marks. So, let’s start there.
Don Hernaccio’s, El Salvador 4202, Palermo, makes sandwiches on schiacciata. I ordered the Michelangelo, a stunningly good combination of excellent mortadella, fresh straciatella cheese (more or less the insides of a burrata), pistachios, pesto, and olive oil. 14200 pesos, about $12, and worth every centavo. A return visit was less successful. First, in just two weeks from the first visit, he’s changed his bread recipe, going from a thin, crunch classic version of schiacciata to a puffy, soft, more focaccia-like version. I like the first better. I tried his eponymous Don Hernaccio sandwich, and let’s just say… no. The idea of a blue cheese, smoked bacon, caramelized onion, and pistachio sandwich sounded right up my alley. But there was little in the way of the blue cheese, the bacon was… raw, cold, slices right out of the packet, there were way too many onions, it was all I could taste. I took it to go and tried heating it up, to cook the bacon a bit, but it really didn’t make it any better. After a few bites, I tossed it. Who puts raw bacon on a sandwich? On anything? I know it’s smoked, it’s not really raw, but it’s just a lot of cold fat and unpleasant texture. I’ll stick with the mortadella or try one of the other less adventurous sounding combinations.
Vince Il Bar, Pierina Dealessi 1310, Puerto Madero, goes for a thinner style focaccia. It’s definitely got the higher olive oil content, and it’s airy, but thin, which is perfect for a sandwich bread. The Natalina is packed with spicy salami, fontina cheese, a mushroom cream, and sweet and sour bell peppers. The Santa has mortadella, burrata, olive oil, and basil leaves. Both are excellent, and generous portions. They currently run 23,000 pesos apiece, or around $19, but they’re bigger than I can eat solo - a half for me is just fine for lunch, and split the other half with someone else, or bring it home for later.
De los Frutos, Av. del Libertador 256, Retiro, is a tiny spot along this busy avenue. Most people seem to grab a sandwich to go, they only have four one-person tables inside. Made on focaccia, which is liberally dusted with paprika and salt, and impregnated with red onions and cherry tomatoes, I found the bread to be a bit dense, and borderline wet. I kind of think that’s because they don’t make these sandwiches to order. They’re premade and stacked up on shelves on the counter, sitting out throughout lunch service. Not, to my mind, the most sanitary approach, both from the smog from the passing traffic, but also sitting out at room temperature for hours with meat and mayo based sandwiches. They only offer three options - beef, pork, and chicken, and only had the latter two on the day I visited. The roast pork was fine, but the semi-caramelized onions dominated the sandwich, while the arugula and not particularly garlicky aioli were more or less lost. The sandwiches run 7500 pesos, just a shade over $6, which seems a steal, but in the end, I picked out the filling and left most of the bread. My guess is that if these were made to order, they’d be delightful, but as is, not so much.
La Focacceria, Av. Pres. Roque Sáenz Peña 1140, San Nicolás is a small spot on a pedestrian walkway near the Obelisco. The charming chef and I chatted a bit, as initially I was the only person there. His claim is that this spot is the first dedicated focacceria in Argentina. I have no reason to dispute it, though it seems odd in a country where almost half the population is of Italian descent. Here, he makes individual sandwich sized focaccia that are crunchy on the outside and soft and pillowy inside. Actually, he apparently makes different kinds of focaccia on different days, depending on his whims - I like that approach! I’m trying to keep somewhat with the mortadella theme, just to do fair comparisons, when offered. A generous amount of it sliced atop tomatoes and stracciatella cheese, and topped with arugula and a pistachio basil pesto. Excellent! And very reasonable at 7500 pesos, just over $6, and far, far better than the one just above this at the same price point. And then on a second visit, with an onion focaccia - kind of like a big bialy - with the day’s special, pernil, or roasted pork leg, with mozzarella, mustard cream, tomatoes, caramelized onions, and arugula. Wow! Okay, very different, since it’s a hot sandwich, and one that needed to be eaten with knife and fork, but, wow! Fantastic combination and sandwich.
Arte Focaccia, Nicaragua 4748, Palermo - cute little place, a certain feel of being some sort of mall chain outlet, though as far as I know, they’re a solo operation. Focaccia sandwiches available in two sizes - the small, as pictured, running about 8000 pesos, or around $6.50, and the large, about 50% bigger it looked like, running 12000, or just under $10. The bread itself is decent if nothing special. It could use some more olive oil and salt in the mix. Good mortadella, burrata, and roasted cherry tomatoes (nice touch!), the pesto is fresh, but tastes of nothing but the herbs - no noticeable garlic or cheese or pepper. Overall, decent but nothing special.
Santa Croce BA, Crisólogo Larralde 1662, Nuñez gets a lot of accolades for its focaccia sandwiches. Enough so that I was a bit surprised on a sunny weekend afternoon to be the only person there, until I was about to leave when one more person came. Now, one of the things that I was salivating over was that they make a point that they use a particular mortadella that I like, from Dinas Salumeria in Tandil, made with walnuts and black pepper (about a four hour drive straight south of us - ooh, I should go there on one of my short getaways and do a little exploring, it’s considered the fiambre, or cured meat, capital of the province). It’s what I buy for home because it’s so much better than the repetitive same-same pistachio ones. I was salivating as I ordered it. And then, there on my sandwich was mortadella with pistachios. It was a good mortadella, but don’t think it was Dinas, who, as far as I know, don’t make a pistachio one (I could be wrong), yet the woman at the counter told me they’d delivered the wrong one. They delivered a mortadella from a different producer?
I can see a mortadella with walnuts sitting in your display case… you just haven’t start slicing it yet. Sounds like someone bought a stopgap mortadella when they ran out and are just using it up. Plus - and this is a pet peeve in Buenos Aires - tell me when you’re going to substitute one ingredient or an entire recipe for another - this happens way too often, especially on delivery orders. What if I was allergic to pistachios, but not walnuts?
Still, it’s decent ingredients, just not what I was anticipating. My biggest issue with this sandwich is it’s just too much bread to filling ratio, and I ended up removing the top half and eating it as an open-face sandwich. A bit disappointing all around. 7100 pesos, just under $6. They also offer a larger one for 12000 pesos, about $10, to share. And, since they were making cannoli, and you know I love a good cannolo, I got one. Oh hell, there are my walnuts! Actually might be the first time I’ve had a cannolo with walnuts. Pretty damned good too.
Where do we stand after this first half-dozen?
I’m going to have to give first place to La Focacceria, both for the quality of the focaccia, and the deliciousness of the fillings.
But a close second, now slightly hesitantly, to Don Hernaccio’s. I do prefer his earlier version of schiacciata, though the new one is still quite good. He definitely has the best of the mortadella filled one I’ve tried, but his creative attempt on the other is a mistake.
Vince Il Bar comes in a rather distant third. Still very good, but not playing at the same level as the other two. Plus I’m still miffed about the whole cannoli debacle.
I’m a little focaccia sandwiched-out, so while there will be another entry, it’s going to have to wait a couple of weeks at least. I have a list of about two dozen more, and happy to have other suggestions! I’ll eventually get to them all. Or not.