Cosi, Birmingham, MI: 6/16/2003, 2:10pm
Freshly made flatbread (baked right in front of you in a brick oven! with trimmings to snack on!), split open. Good tomatoes. Only one layer. Comes with house-branded "kettle-style" potato chips.
Turns out Cosi is a chain. I figured it had to be, with the potato chips.
OK, what the hell is this. First thing this morning, you post two Jewish-related entries, and then you post a picture of a sandwich with bacon in it???
Well, to really explain this, I'm going to have to go all the way back to the 1950's. My Dad (if I remember correctly, and surely he will be good enough to comment and correct my story if I'm wrong) has just gotten his BA at Columbia. Having been fascinated by maps his whole life, but never having gone outside the confines of New York state, he takes a Greyhound bus trip around the country. As a bit of a cultural study, he orders a "burger with everything" everywhere he goes, to see what that means. Some places, it's just a burger with lettuce and tomato. Some places, it includes a fried egg, or bacon, or other heart-stopping treats. But it is indeed different everywhere.
Call this, then, a continuation of that study. It's harder to order a burger with everything -- thinly differentiated theme burgers abound, with their own specific names. The Buckaroo! The River Burger! The Deluxe! The Shelly Burger! The Old Fashioned! Rarely is there a simple "burger" with a list of potential additions, any more.
But many diners offer a club sandwich -- and none of them are the same. Voila! My own version of the cultural study. The basic theme of bread, turkey, and bacon is consistent, but the details change.
(or, as Miz Becky said, "So basically a club sandwich is a BLT with bacon? What's so funny? Oh... uh... I mean, with turkey. Shut up.")
Now, Dad just enjoyed the differences, and told the story to an impressionable son with latent sociologist tendencies. And I used to just order them, eat them, and try to remember the differences. But now that I have a database-driven, categorized, public place to store them, and a digital camera to capture them... well, obviously I had to post the pictures. I had to. Don't you see?
I'm not obsessive! I'm not!