Admit It—Not Every Sandwich Needs Cheese

A couple of years ago, I watched a video of a British sandwich artist who refused to put cheese on his sandwiches.

I am ready to engage with this two years later. Chef Halley has a point about cheese, though I question his practice of building his sandwiches on the worst sandwich bread. It doesn't always need to be cheese in a sandwich.

A piece of grocery store brand mild cheddar is not the best source of both fat and flavor if you already have some of the same ingredients. There are a lot of bland cheeses out there, and their presence can make your sandwich worse. A dull, unbalanced sandwich is caused by too much fat.

A BBQ pork sandwich doesn't need cheese, it just distracts from and dulls the rich flavors that took hours to develop in a smoker. A vegetarian sandwich, with a slice of creamy cheese, does not need a slice of fat, but something like havarti will saturate your palate with fat. It would be a big crime to put cheese on a tomato sandwich. Summer tomatoes shouldn't have to hide their light under cheese.

I'm not asking you to stop eating cheese completely. The cheesesteak, a tuna melt, bologna and American are things of this nature. I don't count calories but for flavor, so I'm asking you to think about your cheese usage.

Are you still not convinced? Let me tell you a story.

I broke my finger on a scooter on Christmas. Santa had brought two of them, one for each of my twin sisters, and my dad and I decided to race in the church parking lot. I was in the emergency room for the rest of Christmas after I ate shit, broke my finger and banged up my head. I missed out on a ham sandwich the day before, but my dad brought me one the next day, as I was convalescing in my grandmother's guest room.

I thought as I looked at the sandwich that there was no cheese, but then I took a bite. I had never had a better ham sandwich. The ham was salty, the mayo creamy, the pickles sweet and sour, it was a perfectly balanced bite, and cheese would have wrecked it.

I don't think a lot of people would be smart with their sandwich cheese, but I do think a lot of people would be smart. A good sandwich is all about balance, and cheese can tip the scale if you are not careful.