Hartenkass, Amsterdam. Service without a smile

Hartenkass is a great little sandwich shop just off the beautiful Prinsengracht canal in the heart of Amsterdam. It has a huge menu full of delightful classics and a few unusual combos.

The first sandwich I am going to review from Hartenkass' menu is the NR. 19. Despite it sounding like R2D2's love child it is in fact a chicken, bacon, avocado sandwich with lettuce and pine nuts. I opted for a brown seeded roll (as the day goes on the selection of bread reduces, so getting there around 1ish is the best). Now for the sandwich....in a word, delightful. The extremely generous fillings which the charmingly grumpy sandwich crafter piles in the sub style roll offer absolutely no disappointment, every bite full of ingredients and not a single bread only bite (the first sign of a terrible sandwich; battling against bread to reach the filling!). At least 5 slices of chicken and half an avocado make for a packed sandwich, topped with lettuce and crispy little bacon bits, a sublime texture is created, creamy smooth avocado, crunchy bacon and a pine nut here and there top this sandwich off as a true great lunch time filler.

Service without a smile, but who cares when the food is this good, who am I to demand a smile? I would have it no other way, I'd take a punch in the groin as long as they keep making sandwiches this good.

http://www.hartenkaas.nl/

Do you like sandwiches?....Do you like the world wide web?...BOOM!...MEGA SANDWICH

Welcome to MEGA SANDWICH, the slice of the internet dedicated to those artists who put stuff between bread and make it so relicious (ridiculously delicious).

Not a lot of people know this but sandwiches were actually invented on the fifth day of creation, Friday, as (understandably) by this time God was flipping hungry, not only had he created light and dark, land and sea but also shit loads of animals and plants! So although the bible tells us Sunday was his day of rest, he did sneak a cheeky little mini break on Friday afternoon. He sat down on a mountain, sighed a deep breath of exhaustion and surveyed the beautiful world he had created; he observed a great white shark chomp down on a baby seal, a lion tearing apart a gazelle and a blue whale going to town on a plankton buffet...naturally this made God bloody hungry. With a click of his fingers he ground down some flour and fashioned some delightful poppy seed ciabatta, sliced up a few juicy chickens, chopped up a couple of avocados, some ripe tomatoes and fresh cucumber, mayo, and finished with a pinch of salt and 'hella' pepper. He chowed down on his new delicious creation and felt revived and ready to crack on...

...and to this day man has carried on this tradition, so simple and yet so many possibilities. This blog is here to celebrate all the great sandwiches of the world, I will do my best to guide you to the best of the best, each sandwich will be marked on various criteria including the quality of the bread, moistness of sandwich, texture, combination of flavours, seasonings and overall deliciousness.

I hope you will enjoy this blog and more importantly enjoy some amazing sandwiches, any suggestions of sandwiches which deserve to be celebrated are very welcome.


MEGA SANDWICH