I'm not vegetarian, but Grand Central Bakery in Seattle/Portland had a Maitake sandwich that I loved enough to reproduce at home:

"Crisp-roasted maitake mushrooms with garlicky labneh, fresh local raab, warm Middle Eastern Spices and Mama Lil's spicy pickled peppers on a toasted Ciabatta roll."

The raab and the mushrooms (sliced into sheets) were seared crisp. I substituted harissa mixed with mayo or greek yogurt for the sauce.

Oooh, I love this. A few years ago, I started keeping track of my favorite coffeeshops. They're not "the best ever" by some objective metric; I'm not Zagat. But they're special to me!

- Tradition Coffee Roasters, Kailua, HI

- Offset Coffee, LA, CA

- Igam Coffee, Brooklyn, NY

- City League, Brooklyn, NY

- Ozo Coffee, Boulder, CO

- Odyssey Coffee, Ocean Grove, NJ

You have been unusually blessed in the sandwich department of your life.

Forgot Arby's Beef 'n Cheddar but otherwise looks like a good list

We all have favorites, but that's not the point WZ was making.

great list.

in addition to anything your parents make, sometimes the best sandwich is the one my wife makes for my kids and they don't finish.

IMHO this is Beginner Level, basic enjoyment, at the cost of cardiovascular health, due to those saturated fats that the man in the sandwich shop never tells you about.

To up your sandwich enjoyment game, what you want is a bread making machine, ideally by Panasonic, with plenty of flour in the cupboards and a well-rehearsed routine of putting the bread on.

Here you get delayed gratification since it takes three minutes to load the machine and four hours for it to bake a loaf. You get proper bakery smells, which is a bonus, and the freshest bread in town (the second you unload the machine).

Freshness is a hack with any bread you buy. It is usually harmless additives that keep it 'fresh', but there is no need for the 'harmless additives' when you have a Panasonic machine. You won't find yourself adding weird chemicals, but you could find yourself adding, nuts, seeds, berries and other fruit to your bakes, to suit your whims or preferences of your guests.

Sometimes some people notice your fresh bread and insist on telling you how much better their sourdough is (that they made once in lockdown) or how that their local bakery makes far nicer bread than your pathetic little Panasonic machine. So you get an extra 'last laugh' from having to endure these ad-hoc lectures on sourdough that is just not in the same league as your favourite bread made effortless by your lovely machine.

You might miss out on interactions with that sandwich store (they rob you slowly, hence the staff will know your name and preferences, if a regular), however, people outside the sourdough cult are always impressed by home made bread, even if you insist it was effortlessly made.

Making your own bread connects you to our history of making bread, plus you get a much healthier product, arguably real bread, unlike that nonsense that is commercially sold as 'bread'.

Eating a sandwich now, haven't bought one for maybe five years.

the sandwich shop in dogpatch has been closed for years. their building was remodeled for startups (kind of a meh patchwork of steel panels, some corten and some not), and they tried to move over a couple blocks, but the pandemic got them.