Opinion – Josimar Melo: The best club sandwich is in Paris

Arriving in another city and ordering food in your hotel room seems like nonsense. With the endless offer of typical dishes out the door, how can you eat locked up, a prisoner of the always withered and tedious room service menu?

That’s what I always think —except when, arriving at the hotel, I’m both hungry and tired, and at times that don’t make it easy to find an interesting restaurant that’s still open.

In these cases, the way is to appeal to some quick fix ordered via the intercom, which bothers me even before assessing the quality of the food, for two reasons.

To begin with, in an ordinary, small room, I don’t like the aromas that food leaves in the air —which can be seductive when it arrives, but become cloying when, sated, you just want to sleep.

Secondly, I am horrified by the sight of trays with leftover meals lying on the floor in the corridors. Even in the best houses I’ve received instructions like “when you’re done, just leave the tray outside”.

It must be freshness, but I find the spectacle appalling.

(I always call the front desk to ask them to come and remove the tray—directly with me, not on the floor.)

With it being inevitable to eat in the room, at least I have no doubts as to what to choose. Faced with the usual options —steak with fries, bolognese pasta, mozzarella pizza— I always order a classic hotel meal: the club sandwich.

I like sandwiches, even at home, but I’ve never made a club sandwich, which, I fantasize, would be insipid outside the environment that seems atavistic to him: the tray with a shiny cloche delivered to your door.

I have no hesitation in ordering even though most of them are downright bad. I think that with each disappointment, the determination to find an appetizing and rewarding specimen increases.

I don’t know the history of the delicacy. Superficially researching we see versions that he was born in one or another club (of course) in New York at the end of the 19th century.

But there will also be those who say that, in the same way that Americans eat BLT (“bacon, letuce, tomato”, bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich), “club” would be the abbreviation of its ingredients (“chicken and letuce under bacon” , chicken and lettuce under bacon).

I don’t think so, but who knows…

The fact is that, in unknown ways, it became a hotel classic, with the same basic composition: bread with chicken (or turkey), bacon, lettuce, tomato, egg and mayonnaise. Cut into triangles and skewered with toothpicks.

I’ve asked for it at the Lotte in New York, at an apart-hotel in Bangkok, at the Fasano in Belo Horizonte, at the Grand Hyatt in São Paulo. But none of them beat the one at the Plaza Athenée in Paris, at least at the time when the hotel’s gastronomy was under the responsibility of chef Alain Ducasse.

I believe it hasn’t changed, but for the low price of 40 euros it used to be impeccable: white bread, like miga, without crust, soft but toasted; roasted chicken (not grilled); candied tomatoes, crispy bacon, lettuce, free-range boiled egg, mayonnaise. On the side, a salad with countless types of leaves, crispy potato chips and another small pot of mayonnaise.

And without the typical inconvenience: the club sandwich has two floors, or three slices of bread (one of them in the middle), which gives it dimensions worthy of a São Paulo Mercadão, anti-ergonomic, almost impossible to bite —which forces you to use cutlery, a contradiction in terms of a sandwich.

Because at the Plaza Athenée (and a few other places), it comes high, but it’s actually two layers superimposed, each with two slices of bread. Just grab the top half with your hands, ignore the silverware that comes with it, and grab it with ease and without shame.