Here are the 24 teams playing in Euro 2020 and their representative national sandwiches. Please feel free to recommend changes.
Poland – Zapiekanka: open face sandwich with mushrooms, cheese and ketchup
Slovakia – Cigánska Pečienka: a pork chop sandwich, marinated in milk, then fried and topped with onions, pickles, and mustard
Netherlands – Some kind of pickled herring monstrosity. After consultation with Dutch folks (Simon Gleave on twitter) we are changing this to Uitsmijter – which is a ham, egg, and cheese sammich. Also, did you know that “Dutch Sandwich” usually refers to a tax dodge whereby a company has an overseas company and a Dutch company and, look, I just make sandwiches.
Ukraine – Another country that loves open faced sandwiches, though apparently the national dish is “salo” (cured pork fat) which they often eat on rye bread
Scotland – Square sausage and tattie scone
Czech Republic – Obložené Chlebíčky – beautiful open-face sandwiches
Spain – Bocadillo. I will try to make a Bocadillo which doesn’t suck this time. Someone suggested a calamari bocadillo.
Sweden – toast skagen (bread with shrimps and cured fish eggs and dill and stuff)
Hungary – I give up, they only seem to like sausages in a roll, so that’s what they get We are going to use Doc’s suggestion: “Hungarian expat here. We like all sorts of sandwiches! A typical Hungarian sandwich is a white crusty loaf (think Pain Levain), open face, 0.5 cm slabs of butter, Gyulai sausage or Pick salami sliced into medallions, and either a fresh Hungarian wax pepper, fresh tomato or fresh cucumber on the side or on top. Yummmmmm”
Portugal – Francesinha, the Portuguese equivalent of a croque madame
France – jamon buerre – one of the top five best sandwiches of all time
Germany – butterbrot. Yep, just butter on bread. But.. the Germans take sandwiches so seriously that they have an entire day dedicated to the sandwich (the last Friday of September) and on that day they make gigantic Dagwood sandwiches.
Turkey – Balik Ekmek – a mackerel sandwich
Italy – Lampredotto – tripe sandwich with a green sauce on top, called lampredotto because tripe kinda looks like Lamprey which was super popular to eat in the 17th century.
Wales – Welsh rarebit – cheese on bread
Switzerland – fondue – ok, so technically not a sandwich, more of a soup
Denmark – Smorbrod – the most famous of all open-face sandwiches
Finland – Porilainen – a big ole sausage sammich
Belgium – Mitraillette (lit. “machinegun”) – meat and veg on a half a loaf of french bread, topped with fries and one of their famous fry sauces (Samurai, etc.)
Russia – Sprats and egg
England – Chip butty. Now if they play better football I might upgrade them to a ploughman’s
Croatia – Cevapi – grilled sausage and red pepper sauce sandwich
Austria – Belgete Brote – another open-face sandwich crazy country
North Macedonia – Simit-Pogacha – a sausage roll filled with pie crust and topped with yogurt
I am here for this content!
Might I suggest Coronation Chicken for England, a delicately spiced reminiscence of a once-proud Empire.
Most of these are gross. But…
England: “It’s coming home” Bacon Roll. I couldn’t eat one now but I loved them when I did. Also Indian food = British food, so definitely a seekh kebab roll (spiced minced chicken or mutton wrapped in naan or roti with spices and coriander or chilii chutney on the side) DELISH!
1Nil, when you’re next back in London you need to visit Dishoom.
Their Bacon Naan Roll = one of the culinary inventions of this century, washed down with bucketloads of chai (and not that nasty coffee chain nonsense)
It’s so good / popular that they started sending out make at home kits during lockdown:
https://www.dishoom.com/food-drink/
Ps Tim, amazing article (for the avoidance of doubt Fragile was equally great and well demonstrates the depth of your writing from football to sandwiches to morality). I’m thoroughly enjoying the variety (even if the topic was of course just awful)
My tuppence:
Scotland – I feel like their sandwich should involve some form of deep fried Mars bar. Maybe just between two sheets of sliced white bread (never having had the privilege I’m not quite sure how they are serve them!)
Italy – I like to consider myself a fairly adventurous eater, but I cannot disassociate tripe from what I feed my dog. They have such amazing food – surely there’s a more apt and appealing alternative?
If Kante can actually make Benzima, Griezman and Mbappe work together up front, it’s light out. They might as well collect the trophy now.
Wow, some array. The Slovak Cigánska Pečienka is appealing. Marinating pork in milk makes it melt-in-mouth tender. Sounds like a schweineschnitzel sandwich. My better half makes a mean chicken schnitzel. Just as good cold as a leftover next day with spicy brown mustard.
Ate Welsh Rarebit quite a bit (ugh) when young– having fam from near Leicester. Would pass on it for several others here.
As an Englishman, the classic sandwiches are bacon, ham and mustard, cheese and tomato or pickle. Chip butties very nice but a fried egg is better,
Hungarian expat here. We like all sorts of sandwiches! A typical Hungarian sandwich is a white crusty loaf (think Pain Levain), open face, 0.5 cm slabs of butter, Gyulai sausage or Pick salami sliced into medallions, and either a fresh Hungarian wax pepper, fresh tomato or fresh cucumber on the side or on top. Yummmmmm
Another classic is the honey butter. Same type of deal with the bread and butter but you drizzle honey on top. The bread has to be fresh but not hot so it doesn’t melt the butter.
I know, not technically a sandwich but that’s what we like 🙂
Enjoy!
Thank you! I was at my research wits end.
Chipping in on the English sandwich (sorry), I think consideration ought to be given to either a marmite sandwich, cucumber sandwich (crust removed), or some kind of fish paste thingy. All on soft white Wonder bread, with a scraping of butter. Pretty disappointing, I’ll admit. Not unlike their footie team of recent memory.
I imagine Italy have about twenty contenders for this, given that everything in Italy tastes like Ambrosia, but I want to give a shout out the the Panuozzo from Napoli: a big, rectangular loaf of pizza dough bread filled with Italian meats, olives, basil etc. Might be the single best thing I’ve eaten, and each one can feed about 4 folk.
i lived in germany for 6 years and every town or village has a bakery. baked fresh daily and with no preservatives, it’s bad after two days. likewise, the butter is very soft and delicious. they often top brotchen (shortened, brot) with cheese and either ham, salami, marmalade, or even chocolate on the butterbrot. my kids used to love nutella on theirs. even my nephews have fallen in love with nutella after hanging out with their cousins.
germany were predictably inept in the final third yesterday for the same reason as the last world cup; they tried to play a striker as a center forward. in the world cup it was werner and yesterday, it was gnabry. both players are so talented but low blows it every time. with that, good on low for changing it at halftime, switching from a back 3 and abandoning the center forward approach, playing a 4-3-1-2. however, they needed the full 90 minutes to break france down, not just 45. likewise, the substitutions were awful.
they simply haven’t been able to get it together since klose retired. they had mario gomez at the last world cup but didn’t use him, hence their demise. the thing is klose is polish-born and gomez is brazilian-born. germany, for all of their talent, isn’t producing center forwards. the irony is i learned, not only the difference between a striker and a center forward, but how to play center forward in germany. weird.
congrats on emi martinez on becoming the argentine #1. he’s had a long journey but has persevered and deserves all he gets.
I looked at that lineup for Germany yesterday and had the thought that if Low had played Havertz in that role (a la Tuchel)– as opposed to Gnabry– they might have had more success/better shots.
I lived in Germany as well and can attest to the fresh bread and butter. This is one of the main reasons why I’m a baker!
I traveled to Germany a few time, both as a musician and for a day job. One time I went to Munich. All my colleagues at the time were based out of the Ruhr Valley,oat of them in Frankfurt. They couldn’t wait to join me there because they all loved Bavaria, especially the food. They took me took this famous and supposedly quintisenntial Bavarian restaurant in Oberhaching they all freaked out over.
They ordered for me a great speciality there. It was – I’m not kidding – a hunk of boiled meat on bland gravy. I spent the rest of the trip eating Thai, Italian, Indian, anything but German.
hahahahah..
I had a pig knuckle when I was there as well. Look, the bread is great, the sausages are great, the coffee is good, but at the time I was drinking every day so my judgement is not to be trusted. But I was a kid when I first experienced the bread culture there and I can confirm that the bread and butter is my favorite among most places I’ve ever been.
Amsterdam sandwich is the TAX avoidance scheme used by big companies. In fact if you visit Amsterdam you’ll see plaques in the walls of various buildings where top music artists (U2, STONES, BRUC etc) all use this to avoid paying exordinate taxes