The Avocado Sandwich at Prune
It doesn't happen often, but sometimes you're at a restaurant, waiting for your food, and you see a dish appear on the pass. You think to yourself: "Ooooh, that looks so good, maybe I should've ordered that?" You stare it for a few more beats and begin chastising yourself for ordering the thing you ordered instead of that other dish. "What was I thinking? That looks so much better! Mine's going to suck."
That's exactly what happened to me the other day when I had lunch at Prune, only there was a twist ending: when the waiter picked up the plate to bring it to the lucky person who ordered it, I quickly discovered that the lucky person who ordered it was me.
The sandwich is listed on the menu as: "Avocado Sandwich on pumpernickel bread with red onion, ricotta cheese, and preserved lemons."
I imagined a chaste, health-foody closed sandwich that'd undo the damage of the French fries, burgers and pizza I'd consumed over the course of the summer. Maybe there'd be a side of sprouts.
How wrong I was!
There was nothing chaste about this sandwich. I expected Elizabeth Moss and, instead, I got Jessica Rabbit.
Let's deconstruct it so you can make it at home:
A very large piece of pumpernickel bread is toasted. (That must be a very wide loaf.) The bread is spread with ricotta cheese and then the cheese is topped with lots of ripe, sliced avocado. At that point it's probably drizzled with the first drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper. Maybe lemon juice too.
On top of that, as you can see, are heirloom cherry and grape tomatoes sliced in half, small rings of red onion, and--if you look very carefully--bits of chopped up preserved lemon. There's another splash of olive oil and then what I detected to be a sprinkling of white sesame seeds and either black sesame seeds or poppy seeds.
These bizarre elements add up to form one killer sandwich. The table next to me saw me eating it and both people at the table ordered it for themselves too. It's the kind of sandwich that inspires awe and envy; if you're in New York, go order yourself one, if you're not, go make yourself one, before the summer's over.
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