One place once wowed me with a deep-fried club. Like a Monte Christo.
The Club is one of the great sandwiches, and I despise those who mess with it as I despise those who draw mustaches on subway posters: they’re vandals, plain and simple. The 4-triangle cut is essential, as are the toothpicks with frilly cellophane tops. Everything must be sliced THIN for max flavor.
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Such rigid criteria offends most food pros. In this day and age of food prep, messing with, adapting rules most menus. Whereas home prep can be as rigid as you please.
Bold statement to make on a global food forum.
With all due respect to your definition of delicious of course.
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This isn’t true, in my opinion.
Even if it were, I think at whatever “pro” level, “messing with” and adapting standards aren’t intrinsic positives-- they have to serve some purpose. And as with the painter’s art, mastering standards is the price of a license to start messing, IMO. But that’s honored too seldom “in this day and age”.
We can imagine lettuce and bacon foams, and tomato water tea bubbles perched by tweezer and syringe onto a sourdough cracker, the assemblage held firm by a wasabi mayonnaise glue. While some pros might think such a dish is good or imaginative, it’d just not be a club sandwich.
I guess I’m with Bill on this one–I’ve not seen or tasted a club sandwich that raised the bar over a well-executed standard version.
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Differing opinions are welcome.
I’ve bought the the goodies to make Club sandwiches this weekend. Smallish turkey breast to sous vide (Serious Eats/J. Kenji López-Alt recipe), fine quality thick bacon (no fine quality thin bacon to be found), ripe, fatty beefsteak tomato, iceberg and butter lettuces to play with, have BF and Duke’s mayo on hand and it will be sandwich style sourdough for the bread. We have the frilly picks and assorted potato chips on hand. I think I will need a scoop of FF cottage cheese and slices of some of those lovely peaches on the side. Aiming for tomorrow night’s dinner with this.
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What, no dill pickle spear on the side?
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This sounds lovely–save some for me?
Regarding bacon… I agree that fine quality presliced bacon is impossible to find thin, at least packaged. And I generally buy only premium, thick-sliced bacon. HOWEVER, Wahine has converted me to thin-sliced for sandwiches like BLTs and Clubs. We now just buy the best thin we can find. I’m willing to settle for a quality downtick for the effect on texture.
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The 4-triangle cut has become relatively rare in eastern Canada.
I’d guess that less than 1 in 10 Club Sandwiches that I’ve seen served in restaurants in eastern Canada over the past 20 years have had the 4-triangle cut.
Maybe Americans see that cut as more essential.
In Canada, it’s the presence of chicken/turkey and bacon that make a sandwich into a club. The mayo, lettuce and tomato are typical. The cheese is optional.
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All the ingredients matter but I think the key ingredients to a club sandwich are the bread, ham and tomato. Bread is a personal preference but if it’s not good…the sandwich usually won’t be either. Condiments are also personal preference, but should be balanced…see below.
For bread, I like a rustic sliced sourdough, toasted and not too thick or crunchy…or a few slices of a good pullman loaf toasted. In the Bay Area, Acme makes a very good pullman, but you have to hand slice it and it’s $8 or $9 bucks. It’s a nice upgrade from standard white bread…some heft but still soft-ish. There’s lots of sourdough of all types…but a good commercially produced sourdough usually works, especially in a diner or similar place, which is why I mention it.
Bacon speaks for itself, usually gets all the attention. Turkey breast is usually bland-ish but needs to be moist., sometimes a smoked turkey works. The ham to me is the bridge between the bacon and turkey. Need something that isn’t as smokey as bacon yet has its own flavor profile, yet compliments the turkey. Virginia ham or a nice black forest.
A good tomato is like the cherry on top…sets everything up, plus some lettuce for crunch but not too much. Overall I think the trick to a good club sandwich is balance…all flavors and textures have to play off each other but not dominate the others. Otherwise you get a BLT with other stuff in it, or ham sandwich with other stuff. I like to taste the ham, turkey and then the bacon and tomato sort of come into play. YMMV.
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I rarely see ham in a club in eastern Canada. Maybe twice in 200 club Sandwiches over 35 years.
It sounds like Clubs and their essential ingredients are highly regional.
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Prob kalamatas. No good tasting dill ‘spears’ around here.
You’re right, club sandwich varies. Often no lettuce or tomato. My bad.
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Very insightful. My only quibble is that I think a good tomato (and it’s juices) can be the superstar.
Lunch delivery from a local diner: tuna salad club on marbled rye. Nice ripe tomatoes. Flavorful, but thin bacon. Heavy mayo in the tuna. I enjoyed it!
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Wow, tuna salad with bacon! That’s a new and intriguing combo for me.
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A sandwich place near me in college has a tuna melt with bacon called the Tina Tuna. It’s good! 
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They used to have a Tina Tuna tuna melt sandwich a a restaurant in the now-demolished White Flint Mall. It was a favorite of my mom.
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Tuna with bacon is totally underrated and under-utilized.
It’s like “surf and turf” for the rest of us.
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I used to enjoy the Turkey Club, made with roast turkey and turkey bacon, at Aroma coffee shop about 10 years ago, when there were just a few Aroma coffee shops in Toronto, before the chain expanded.
Once there were around a dozen locations, I found most locations weren’t that great at making the turkey club, mostly the result of not making sure the turkey bacon was fried until crispy.
Aroma is a chain coffee shop from Israel that had franchised locations in Florida and Ontario, and probably elsewhere, as well. Unfortunately, there had been several ongoing legal issues between the franchisees and franchisor. I believe all the Ontario locations have now closed, or at least most of them.
The Aroma Turkey Club was served on their fresh baked, thick- sliced bread, which was not toasted, with tomato, lettuce and mayo.
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