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From a chicken Caesar salad sandwich served in a leafy Toowong street to a top restaurant’s contender for the best fish sanger in town, here’s what to seek out.
Sandwich Watch or Sandwich Search? That’s the joke often thrown around the Brisbane Times office.
Such has been the proliferation of sandwich shops in this city over the past few years, it can be hard to sift out the good ones. Yes, a rising tide tends to lift all boats – and the quality of sangers is definitely getting better – but, my god, what a tide. My wallet-weary purchase card can attest to that.
As a colleague said, the opportunity to eat an elevated sandwich is still a rare and precious thing. And these creations often don’t come cheap, so you need to make it count.
Hence Sandwich Watch, and not Sandwich Search.
We’ve been producing this column locally since October last year. Here are the best sangers we’ve eaten over the past 12 months.
Bar Miette’s muffuletta
Jason Barratt knows his way around a sandwich.
Among all the other notches on his CV – senior chef de partie at Attica, sous chef at Melbourne’s Stokehouse, head chef at Raes on Wategos, executive chef at Paper Daisy, and now executive chef at Supernormal and Bar Miette – it’s easy to forget that he helped create Hector’s Deli, the Melbourne shop that popularised the modern Australian sanger craze.
No surprise, then, when sandwiches and variations thereof started showing up on the menu at Bar Miette, the best of which is a muffuletta that Barratt took months to perfect.
Barratt uses a ciabatta loaf delivered daily from Agnes Bakery. If nothing else, a robust, crunchy bread can stand up to a key step in preparing a traditional muffuletta: the wrap. Barratt wraps his tightly in brown sandwich paper for 40 minutes before slicing it for service.
What else goes in this thing? Mortadella, and hot and mild salami cotto from LP’s Quality Meats, chopped Byron Bay Co Sicilian olives, red onion, whatever ruddy Australian tomatoes that might be in season, and provolone cheese.
The combination of the robust, crunchy ciabatta, the umami-packed salami and mortadella, the briny tang of the olives, and the sweetness of the tomato, all brought together by the wrapping process, make it a joy to eat – particularly when sitting on Bar Miette’s fabulous terrace, with its eye-popping views of the Story Bridge.
Corbetta’s Kitchen’s porchetta focaccia
Corbetta’s sits in a warehouse-style Lytton Road tenancy neighbouring the Fish Factory and The Morningside Meat Market. Walk through the sliding doors and you’re met with a simple counter with finish-at-home pastas arranged on the right and a sandwich station and hot cabinet on the left.
You’re here for the shop’s porchetta focaccia, the creation of owner (and former Iceberg’s head chef, no less) Jacopo Corbetta.
Corbetta uses an Italian pizza flour for his focaccia, fermented overnight and baked twice daily.
The pork is sourced locally and marinated in garlic, fresh herbs, lemon, salt and plenty of pepper. It’s then strung shut, cut in pieces, sous vide overnight, and roasted in the morning.
The salsa verde is parsley, garlic, anchovies and a pepper sauce, the rocket broad leaf, which Corbetta uses for its extra crunch as much as he does its pepperier flavour. As for mayo, there’s “just a touch” to help bind everything together – there’s already stacks of richness in the pork.
The focaccia is crisp enough to hold everything in place without slicing at your gums. The sous vide has left the roasted pork supple and easy to tackle. The rocket gives spikes of peppery crunch. The salsa verde acts as a vibrant, savoury through line.
It adds up to one of the best focaccias in town, and a reminder of what happens when a chef turns their skill towards the humble sanger.
Dijon Toasties “Reuben”
This breezy cafe in Tarragindi serves a bunch of great sandwiches (including a cracking Mediterranean vegetable number), but its variation on a classic Reuben is the standout.
When we at it earlier this year, Dijon co-owners Darian Brennan and Bradley Edwards, and group head chef Jordan Shepperd (Edwards and Brennan also own Deedot and Never Been in Holland Park), had swapped the typical rye of a Reuben for Turkish bread buns from Uncle Bob’s Bakery in Belmont that were baked relatively high and fluffy; now it boasts a toasted sourdough.
As for what’s inside, the trio experimented with various meats and cheeses before settling on a brisket pastrami, prepared by Bangalow Sweet Pork, and an off-the-shelf Swiss cheese. Shepperd also uses an off-the-shelf sauerkraut, but makes his own pickles and a Russian dressing he’s spiked with fresh dill.
It’s that rare and precious sandwich that’s filling without leaving you heavy or bloated. The Turkish bread is crammed with ingredients but still soft enough to squeeze down into manageable bites. And it’s a sandwich with plenty of profile, the gentle saltiness of the pastrami, the acidity of the sauerkraut, the umami of the cheese, and the piquant dressing all hitting their individual notes.
Eat at Billy’s Not A F*$&eN Reuben
Eat at Billy’s sandwiches were an immediate hit upon its opening in early 2023 – particularly this take on a Reuben, which throws together 150 grams of wood-smoked wagyu brisket pastrami, red cheddar, pickles, and a generous squirt of signature sauce.
The masterstroke here, though, is the soft, thick-cut white bread. Left untoasted, it soaks up all that sauciness and makes it easier to eat than a traditional mouth-shredding Reuben.
You can double down on the pastrami for extra cash, but we don’t think you need to bother.
Word of warning: Eat at Billy’s sells out fast, every day – often at a time that could be considered borderline customer hostile. Get there before midday if you can to ensure you grab a sandwich.
Fatty Patty’s halal steak sandwich
Fatty Patty shares a simple shopfront with sister business Sam’s Gourmet Pizzas on the northern side of Underwood Marketplace.
The Fatty Patty menu leads with a bunch of burgers, but it’s the sandwiches you want to pay attention to. The bestseller is the Fatz signature sandwich – another variation on the Reuben – but we think the shop’s steak sanger, named the Goat’d, is even better.
It flips the script on the traditional steak sandwich with six-seven score wagyu beef served on shokupan bread along with Swiss cheese, griddled onion and pickled red onion, fresh tomato, a considered scattering of fries, a spinach and rocket mix, a premium off-the-shelf whole egg chipotle mayo, and a final sprinkle of pecorino once the sandwich is sliced.
The Swiss cheese adds a sweet, nutty flavour that helps smooth the mouthfeel; the pickled red onion provides a lovely tangy crunch; the chipotle mayo is velvet smooth; and the pecorino a lovely piquant, appetising touch. Normally fries in a sanger could amount to a carb-on-carb crime but not when combined with the shokupan, which is a lovely, luscious number the Ghumras have sourced locally and given a quick toast on the griddle.
Then there’s the wagyu, which is cooked to medium to render down the fat. That choice of beef means this is a touch more spenny than your average steak sandwich, but it’s worth it.
Joe’s Famous Deli’s lobster roll
Pretty much everything at Patrick Killalea’s Joe’s ‘Famous’ Deli in the CBD is worth your time, but this deceptively refined take on a lobster roll is particularly good.
Killalea uses both Canadian lobster claw and Alaskan crab meat. It’s then tossed in kewpie mayo and lemon zest, slotted into a milk butter bun (rather than brioche, to balance out the sweetness of the meat), and finished with iceberg lettuce, black caviar and chives.
Relatively large compared to other lobster rolls around town, it’s still something you could easily demolish in six or seven bites, so grab a side of fried pickles or fries to finish you off. Just be wary of lunchtime queues during the week.
Honto’s crumbed whiting sando
Two of Brisbane’s best katsu sandos can be found at Honto, one of the city’s best Japanese restaurants.
Honto’s pork katsu sando is a thing of beauty, the chefs eschewing cutlet to instead ground down pork shoulder, pork neck and pork belly into a sausage mix, to which they add pepper, garlic, soy and a touch of seasoning, and set it, “almost like a burger patty”, before adding the crumb.
Still, for us, it plays second fiddle to the restaurant’s crumbed whiting sando, which is one of the best fish sandwiches we’ve eaten in Brisbane. The whiting comes squeezed between two slices of super-fluffy shokupan bread produced by Breadtop to Honto’s specs, with the requisite shredded cabbage, but sets itself apart with the addition of fermented onion and a tea-pickle gribiche.
The chefs use whiting to keep the fish as local and fresh as possible, before applying a “foolproof crumb” that uses both fresh panko and dried panko, and a batter that uses egg white powder and adds a touch of buttermilk – it sets super crunchy on the outside but keeps the moisture of the fish on the inside.
The result is a low-key thriller of a sandwich – a Swiss-precision combo of texture, flavour and temperature, the shokupan giving away to the crunch of the cabbage and the luscious, viscous gribiche, with its pops of dill and chive, and then the crisped panko and nuttiness of the whiting.
Minh Tan’s pork banh mi
Banh mi shops, like any eatery, often keep their recipes a tightly guarded secret. But there are a few things we can tell you about the pork rolls from Minh Tan, arguably Brisbane’s most iconic banh mi outlet.
First, the pork is definitely belly, not the shoulder sometimes used at other shops, and Minh Tan is particular about using only sow meat, so there’s little chance of boar taint. Secondly, the Vietnamese butter is made fresh daily and incorporates a high-grade oil to give it a silken quality.
Good luck getting owner Huong Trinh to talk you through the pate, but plenty of customers have tried to buy it on its own over the years, such is its luscious reputation.
As for the bread, it’s huge: baked fresh each morning and given a light toast before being served, it’s crunchy on the outside and fluffy inside (if you prefer a tighter, more dense roll, we recommend checking out Tan Dinh, which is just around the corner at Inala Civic Centre).
Mitch & Antler’s croque madame
The menu at Mitchelton’s Mitch & Antler’s is full of interesting variations on the classics, but the star is arguably its take on the traditional croque madame.
Owner brothers Tze-Huei and Chewie Choo use two slices of Cordelia sourdough baked to their specs and cram them full of thick-cut smoked ham from Bangalow Sweet Pork and Egmont cheese. Then, on top, goes a seeded mustard and leek bechamel, a fried egg, chives and a “crazy” amount of manchego – the whole thing given a dash of flame before it hits the plate.
You might be tempted to tackle it with a knife and fork. Don’t bother. Despite everything going on with this sandwich, it holds together well and the toasted Cordelia sourdough is soft on the inside, meaning you avoid any mouth-shredding incidents. It would almost be a one-hander but for the wibbly-wobbly fried egg on top.
There’s a lot to love about this sandwich – the perfectly specced bread, the smokey goodness of the chunky ham, that gooey egg. Still, it’s the tangy bechamel that makes it, with the sweetness and texture of the leek and acidity of the mustard.
Riser’s chicken Caesar salad sandwich
Riser is the creation of Tom Cooney, Kieran Ryan and Duncan McKay, who between them have run, worked, baked at or owned Cup Specialty Roasters, Coffee Supreme, Banneton, The Scratch and Netherworld, among others.
They opened Riser in late 2022 in the old Queenslander-style shopfront once occupied by the iconic Bruno’s Tables, and more recently 85 Miskin Street.
The chicken Caesar sanger at Riser has been iterated on at least twice since it was first created (with input from Cooney, Ryan and McKay) by the venue’s original chef, Amos Ilett. Arguably, though, the killer move was the addition of croutons. Along with the flecks of bacon, it adds a welcome textural element to the sandwich, and illustrates from the first bite how much thought has gone into this thing.
The sourdough sandwich loaf is baked fresh on site and lent a touch more oil than your typical loaf.
The rest of the sandwich is pretty straightforward: chicken thigh, mesclun, house-pickled onions, house-made Caesar dressing with dill, and a firm wipe of butter on the bread to head off any sogginess.
Still, there are neat tweaks under the hood, this time courtesy of current chef Gabriel Escalante-Gafau, including the decision to brine the chicken and adding more punch to the dressing by upping there anchovy and parmesan.
Sarni’s brisket sandwich
Sarni is from Marty Coard, Mat Drummond, Noam Lissner (who together also own Ach in Hamilton) and Hugo Hirst. It opened just on a year ago in an unfussy, bright blue space on Racecourse Road. The menu is a tight set of sandwiches that rotate regularly.
Sarni’s beef brisket sandwich is as close to the ideal sanger as we’ve witnessed in this town.
There’s the bread, which Coard describes as being not quite a sourdough, although it’s fermented for 72 hours. Then there’s the brisket, which is Angus beef brined for seven days, and smoked; they’re luscious chunks of beef with plenty of texture, but don’t stray into being dry or stringy.
Sarni’s menu constantly evolves and the brisket sandwich along with it, but the sauce has always been imperative to the final product. When we fell in love with the sanger, it was packing a Laotian-style jeow som chock full of coriander and chilli; now it’s a hoisin barbecue sauce.
There’s some iceberg lettuce for texture and moisture, and a bone marrow beef fat mayo, which adds a lovely long note of umami to the sandwich.
The final element is some fried shallots for a spike of flavour and extra crunch.
Supernice’s Bologna sandwich
Supernice is the creation of chef Dalip Singh and his partner, barista Sherman Yeung. Hidden away on a backstreet of Bowen Hills, this was very much a post-pandemic project for the couple.
This tiny cafe’s Bologna sandwich just looks right straight out of the wrapper.
Singh lightly toasts his Danny’s Bread focaccia on the inside once sliced, then slaps in about 90 grams of high-quality mortadella from Salumi Australia, the same amount of gooey stracciatella from Mansfield’s Casa Motta, and a generous sprinkle of crushed pistachio, giving the sandwich a lovely pop of colour.
It’s a lesson in mouthwatering restraint. The focaccia is left soft on the outside, avoiding any mouth-shredding injury, with much of the texture carried by the crunch of the pistachio.
The mortadella isn’t fatty or greasy but has a mild saltiness that’s offset by the lactic silkiness of the stracciatella. Singh reckons he can’t find a local honey better than Bee One Third; it’s a clever addition, as much about mouthfeel as it is a mild sweetness.
Ta’ameya’s falafel pita pocket
Look for the sandwich board on Felix Street in the CBD, hang a left into Spencer Lane and you’ve found Ta’ameya, a simple market-style marquee that pops up here Tuesday through Friday.
At first, Ta’ameya’s pita pocket perhaps looks like any other you can get around town. But the devil is in the detail. Ta’ameya’s pita bread comes from Papa Pita and is delivered twice weekly, which co-owner Ramay Othman reckons makes a big difference to the overall quality of the pocket. Ta’ameya heats the pitas in a grill, toasting them slightly while steaming them inside.
Then comes the first smear of a house-made tahini that’s been given extra love with garlic, lemon juice and cumin. It’s a lovely, tangy, viscous creation that creates the throughline for the whole pocket. Next comes a classic chopped Egyptian salad, with tomatoes, onions, flat-leaf parsley, crunchy sweet and sour pickles and plenty of mint.
Then there are the falafels themselves, fried discs coated in sesame seeds and cracked coriander seeds for extra crunch. Finally, the pocket is finished with slices of pickled turnips and a few dashes of tahini, this time mixed a little thinner than the initial layer in the pocket.
Wilburs chicken tarragon sandwich
Alex Macdonald and Caitlin Kemp quietly opened this cute little corner cafe in Holland Park towards the end of 2021 and have been steadily building a dedicated local following ever since.
That size means Wilburs has always drilled down on just a few cabinet items and sandwiches in particular, the most impressive of which is its chicken tarragon sandwich.
This sanger seems simple enough, but peer under the bonnet and there are some clever flourishes going on. Macdonald says that’s courtesy of chef Cheyanne Phillips, who helped develop the cafe’s sandwiches in its early days.
What ends up in your mitts is a fabulously clean-eating antidote to the more outrageous, messier sangers you get around town. The tang of the Danny’s Bread block loaf sourdough gives way to the crunch of cos lettuce, celery, alfalfa and walnuts, and then a velvety aioli (given an extra squeeze of lemon juice) and the plump poached free-range local chook. The key ingredient, though, is the tarragon, which cuts through any richness with its subtle aniseed bite.
This thing is generously sized, but you’ll still destroy it in a matter of minutes – in part because it’s so easy to eat.
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