Roast Beef Sandwich

Roast beef sandwiches come hot or cool. A hot one, served open-face, comes smothered with gravy, thus demands utensils, and almost always is accompanied by a mound of mashed potatoes. A cool one is pickupable, and can range from simply sliced beef on white bread to a deli special of roast beef, cole slaw, and 1000 Islands dressing on rye, with cheese optional. A little-known American roast beef hot spot is north of Boston. Here, roast beef sandwiches are a passion in dozens of humble sandwich shops, where they are made from sliced-to-order beef and may come on a Kaiser roll or onion roll. In Buffalo, New York, beef on weck is a locally-treasured tradition of piling just-sliced beef into a kummelweck roll, which is a fairly elegant hard roll spangled with caraway seeds and coarse salt. In Chicago, what’s known as Italian beef – thin-sliced and sopped with garlicy jus – is heaped into a buff loaf and customarily garnished with roasted peppers and/or giardiniera. In the Upper Midwest a sandwich known as “hot beef” tests the line between roast beef and pot roast, for it is made with chunks and shreds of beef rather than tidy slices. It always shares its plate with mashed potatoes and gravy. Regular eaters of hot beef ask for extra bread slices to sop up drippin’s and gravy.