IN SEARCH OF
Atlanta’s best sandwiches
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
If every culture has its chicken soup, then there must be a sandwich sitting alongside it. Depending on where you live, the torpedo-roll sandwich stacked with a heap of whatever-you-like can be named hero, hoagie, Dagwood, po’ boy. It may even have special, inherent ingredients. A muffuletta is not a muffuletta without olive salad. A Cuban sandwich just isn’t the same if it’s not pressed like a pair of well-starched trousers. Try these sammies on for a stack of big flavor and messy fun.
LEE’S BAKERY (not rated)
4005 Buford Highway, Atlanta. 404-728-1008.
The loaves of bread at this popular Vietnamese sandwich shop look French, but they’re not. They’re made with rice flour as well as wheat, giving them a light texture and making a mystifyingly thin, crisp crust. Order Vietnam’s answer to the sub: banh mi thit: a colorful, jam-packed sandwich with a spread of liver pate on one side of the roll, headcheese and ham and crowned with spicy Vietnamese mayo and fresh cilantro. Lick-your-lips rating: 9
JUST LOAF’N (not rated)
313 Boulevard S.E. 404-525-4001, www.justloafn.net.
Cajun comes in more than a dozen kinds of po’ boys at this Grant Park eatery, where the bread is the right stuff for stuffings: The restaurant gets it from Leidenheimer’s Bakery in New Orleans. It’s the perfect vessel for messy, deep-fried shrimp dressed with the works: lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, mayo and spicy Creole mustard. Lick-your-lips rating: 9.5
AU PIED DE COCHON 
3315 Peachtree Road, Atlanta, 404-946-9070, www.aupieddecochonatlanta.com
Few things go together as well as ham and cheese, a culinary fact figured out by the French a century ago, when grilled ham and cheese started showing up on Paris bistro menus (Proust liked them almost a much as he did madeleines). But this puppy is a heart-attack-on-a-plate: a decadent grilled cheese with ham and bechamel sauce topped with broiled Emmental cheese.
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