The Sandwich That Made a Man And a Movie Famous

The Cuban sandwich, an object of new interest since release of Jon Favreau’s film, “Chef,” is, at heart, a grilled-cheese sandwich. A super-charged grilled- cheese sandwich. Of course I am not talking about the nightmare grilled cheese concocted by those who figure Velveeta is cheese and Wonder Bread is bread and that Crisco substitutes for butter. No. The Cuban sandwich is rich, complex, spicy and crisp. And it can, theoretically, along with a food truck and the Internet, catapult a disillusioned chef to stardom. So, I went looking for a Cuban sandwich. I headed for Great Barrington where a Colombian family once produced fine Cuban sandwiches in a cafe in the arcade off Main Street. No luck, there, though. No sandwiches anymore, I learned. So I walked down the street to Rubi’s, nearby, where a Cuban sandwich is made with Asiago cheese, ham, pork, sour spicy pickles and hot sauce on a baguette, the whole thing wrapped tight in parchment paper and crushed, crisped and melted on the press. Good. And close. But where was the mustard? Mustard is to a Cuban sandwich what bagels are to lox. Without the other, each is diminished. The longed-for Cuban requires mustard. Look at Alton Brown’s recipe, the “Good Eats” guy. Although he uses provolone instead of Swiss cheese, Brown slathers his Cuban sandwich in yellow mustard. And one more thing. Why does Rubi’s pork just disappear in the midst of all that ham and hot sauce? Well, flavorful pork is tricky to come by. Mario Batali marinates the pork loin for his Cuban sandwich in 24 ingredients including fennel pollen, sage leaves and kosher salt. And he uses coppa, not ham. O.K. A trifle inauthentic, but this recipe looks hugely delicious. And so does Roy Choi’s, a chef with heady culinary credentials who found joy and celebrity running a Korean taco truck, then five of them, in Los Angeles. With a story a lot like the hero’s in “Chef,” Favreau hired Choi as food consultant on the film. Choi marinates boneless pork shoulder in olive oil and cilantro and lime and garlic and many other flavorful ingredients for his Cuban sandwich. Wonderful. But this, I say to myself, is supposed to be a fast, peasant sandwich. Not a career. So my friend, colleague and fellow foodie, Cynthia Hochswender, introduced me to Sean Elliott, chef at the Stagecoach Tavern on Route 41 in Sheffield, MA. He is a sweet-natured fellow (particularly for a chef) who spent a year eating Cuban sandwiches for lunch while working on a house-painting job in Florida. Every afternoon the food carts rolled onto the premises with hot Cuban sandwiches wrapped in white paper. Elliott liked them enough to put them, years later, on the Stagecoach menu. And he liked Cynthia enough to make one for us. First he split a wedge of focaccia and slathered the inside with a Dijon mustard and mayonnaise mix; he layered on the cured ham, Swiss cheese, sliced dill pickle and the pork, pulled pork in this case with flavor, and, more important, texture. Then he closed it up, brushed the crust, top and bottom, with clarified butter and popped it into the press to melt the cheese, flatten the sandwich and carve hot crispy grooves into the bread. Ten minutes later, standing in the busy kitchen next to sheet pans of risotto, and the growling french-fry cutter and the pots of simmering vegetable stock, we had lunch. A really good lunch.