Panera's Smoked Ham and Swiss

I remember when my grandpa, Papa Agapito, first taught me what a sandwich was.

The year was 1912, and my family was fresh off the boat at Ellis Island. I was a mere eight years old, a wide-eyed doe ready to learn everything about this new land of “America.”

We were waiting in line to have our names shortened (we were originally the Nicholsezzoviovanni family) when Papa Agapito knelt down beside me and laid his kind, wrinkled hand upon my shoulder. “Alexino,” he asked warmly, “do you know what they eat in America?”

I answered “Bowls full of noodles, of course! Doesn't everybody?”

Papa Agapito slapped me upside the head. “Stupid boy!” he spat. “Americans do not eat noodles! If we hope to live in America, we must eat as the Americans do. We must eat sandwiches.”

“What strange people,” I said, “that eat sand for food. It must taste awful and dry!”

Papa slapped me upside the head once again. “Scassacazzo! No! They do not eat sand. I will show you what I mean.”

He proceeded to open his knapsack and pull out two pieces of white bread.

“Do you know what these are?” he asked.

“Bread, of course!” I responded.

Papa grinned. “Do you know what Americans put between these two pieces of bread?”

I thought it over for a second.

“Noodles, Papa?”

He punched me directly in the nose.

“Fessacchione finocchio! No, you foolish child!” he shouted. He reached into his knapsack again and pulled out a fistful of smoked ham, two slices of swiss cheese, a leaf of lettuce, a section of tomato, a diced onion and a glob of yellow mustard. He stacked them high on one piece of bread, one ingredient after another, until it scraped the sky just like the Met Life Tower. I was in awe, partly at the sheer height of the sandwich, and partly at the fact that Papa had all this food in his knapsack on the voyage and shared none with my cousin Enzo, who died of hunger two hours before landfall.

He topped it off with the other slice of bread and, with all the flair of a magician, presented me with the second-greatest tower I had seen that day (after the Met Life Tower).

“This,” he said, beaming, “is a sandwich. This is what they eat in America. Go on, have a bite.”

I eagerly attempted to wrap my tiny hands around the behemoth of meat, cheese and bread that Papa Agapito had so skillfully constructed. I peered up at him, suddenly made nervous by the evident difficulty of the task.

“It's awful big, Papa,” I whispered.

“Stronzo! Leccacazzi! Faccia di culo! Just take a fucking bite already!” he slobbered.

I closed my eyes and struggled to lift the sandwich to my mouth. I unhinged my jaw like a snake swallowing a small woodland creature and slowly stuffed it in.

What I tasted in that moment was the most wonderful taste I had ever tasted. I opened my eyes and looked up at Papa Agapito, smiling wide as I chewed, tears of joy mixing with the blood that was still flowing out of my newly broken nose.

“Papa,” I exclaimed through a full mouth, “I love you!”

“I love you too, Alexino,” he said.

It was the greatest event of my childhood.

Immediately afterward, the Ellis Island medical staff chalked Papa Agapito's shirt with a circled “X” and quickly sent him back to Italy. I never saw him again.

I found myself reliving this experience recently as I went to Panera on my first Sandwich: Approved assignment last week. I sought to taste their version of Papa Agapito's smoked ham and swiss masterpiece that I had savored 96 years prior.

Though Panera's smoked ham and swiss is usually served on rye, I requested sourdough in order to relive that day as accurately as possible. (For that same reason, I also had a Nativist spit on me and tell me to go back where I came from.) I placed my order, and not three minutes later, it was ready and waiting to be eaten.

I took my tray to a corner booth in the back of the cafe/bakery. On first sight, Panera's sandwich is not nearly as large as the one I ate on Ellis Island: at about an inch-and-a-half tall, no jaw-unhinging is necessary.

But don't be fooled: the sandwich is dense with flavor. I picked up the sandwich and weighed it in my hands. It was heavy with my grandpa's distant legacy. I trembled a little bit. I was afraid, I think, to confront the past. I was afraid that the sandwich would be sub-par, that it would tarnish my perception of that happy day. But the fear was unfounded. As I took a bite, all those long-dormant emotions rushed back to me. My nose instantly started bleeding. I closed my eyes and savored the delicious combination of those perfect ingredients. I mean it in the most positive way possible when I say that Panera's sandwiches taste like they have been in an old man's knapsack for twelve days.

I may be biased because of my past, but it's safe to say that anybody will enjoy Panera's smoked ham and swiss sandwich, if not with the same dramatic vigor as a 104-year-old Italian immigrant like myself.

This is setting a high standard, certainly, but I can't help but give this sandwich FIVE OUT OF FIVE SANDWICHES.

Sandwich: APPROVED.