A Sandwich a Day: Slow Roasted Pork at Rucola in Cobble Hill

In this great city of ours, one could eat a different sandwich every day of the year—so that's what we'll do. Here's A Sandwich a Day, our daily look at sandwiches around New York. Got a sandwich we should check out? Let us know. —The Mgmt.

[Photograph: Max Falkowitz]

There are good sandwiches, and there are great sandwiches. Then there are heroes.

No, not those heroes. I mean sandwiches so good you take a bite and think, "wow, this is heroic." These sandwiches were born on a sandwich planet with far higher gravity than ours; a mere skip on Earth takes them into flight.

The Slow Roasted Pork ($12) on Rucola's lunch and brunch menu is just such a sandwich.

It reads like an unpressed Italian- (well, New Yorkified Italian-) style Cuban: chunks of slow roasted pork, provolone instead of Swiss, speck instead of ham, and pickled hot peppers and green tomatoes instead of cukes. There's mayo as well, hardly the same as mustard, but a worthy, and in this case superior stand-in.

The first bite is sublime: crisp, succulent pork is perfectly offset by the tangy sweet pickles, and the meeting of melted cheese, mayo, and pork juice makes for a brilliantly juicy bite that dribbles down your chin like the best burger. The bread, a pillowy cousin of focaccia, is tender, supportive, and rich.

Eat the rest quickly: the bread sogs up a little fast from all the juice. But you won't complain eating the rest with a knife and fork, nor will you mind passing every last crumb of pork and bread through the remaining proto-sauce. A hero's work, after all, is never done.

Rucola

190 Dean St, Brooklyn, NY 11217 (map) 718-576-3209
rucolabrooklyn.com

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