Phagomania: Dude Foods and the Alphabet Sandwich

Regular readers may think that we must have exhausted the possibilities of the sandwich by now. So far in 2015 we have made a giant sandwich out of the winners of this year's food survey, looked at sarnies fed through a flatbed scanner, and revealed that, shockingly, Elvis Presley was a fan of unhealthy food. But after our recent catch up with Nick Chapman from Dude Foods we can see that, in his hands, the journey may have only just begun.

When we last spoke to Chapman back in 2013, he was firing out all manner of stuff on his food blog, including his Inside Out Grilled Cheese Sandwich – that's cheese, bread and cheese – and the 100% Cheese Grilled Cheese Sandwich (cheese, cheese and cheese). So when he set to making a sandwich to span the entire alphabet, it felt like a logical next step.

After all, here’s a man who already had most of the ingredients sitting in his fridge when he set out to create a 26-item sandwich. Choosing one ingredient for each letter of the alphabet (yep, even ‘x’ – xylocarp if you’re wondering), he swiftly constructed this heavyweight feast as the logical conclusion of the BLT sandwich.

The whole thing balances on the edge of feasibility, craftily held in place by bamboo skewers (cheating, surely) and careful distribution. But we know what you're thinking – did he actually manage to, you know, eat it?

“I ate maybe about 50% of it,” Nick states, “but after food is sitting out on your counter while you're putting a giant sandwich like that together, and then sitting around even longer while you take photographs, it doesn't really taste the best.” 

But it’s not all in the eating when your sandwich reaches impossible-to-eat status. As Nick points out, “it's not like some restaurant could just start serving this sandwich”. Just try ordering this at your local Greggs. Rather, this spectacle is clearly for the internet to look and marvel at what a sandwich could be, if we were all as creative as Picasso but ate like Scooby-Doo.

Reflecting on the rise of sandwiches over in the US, Nick offers that “it definitely seems like people are getting more creative with sandwiches. The current big thing seems to be making buns out of things that you wouldn't normally use for a bun like ramen noodles, or spaghetti noodles or different types of stuff like that.”

Some mind-boggling new leads for all you sandwich makers out there, but where should the sandwich go next? We prompt the architect of this monument to the craft for a clue on the possible next move for the sarnie, but Nick shrugs. ”I’m not sure where it can go from here,” he says. Well if he doesn’t know, then nobody knows. Maybe we can add some new letters to the alphabet for a start...