2024-11-18
In Gothenburg, between 2014 and 2017, we lived in a small rental on Slottsskogsgatan in Majorna. Around the corner, right on Mariaplan, was a tiny café called What’s the Deli that served a few Ethiopian/Eritrean-inspired lunch things. Most things had meat in, but there was the jackfruit sandwich that I still dream about. It was hearty and juicy, but above all, deliciously sour. It was so good, especially with a small portion of mac and cheese on the side, and a big pickle. Mhhhh, yumm.
So since I recently stared making my own sourdough bread (4 years after the big Corona-fuelled sourdough hype) I was reminded again of the nice square rye bread slices that enclosed the jackfruit-sauerkraut filling of the What’s the Deli sandwich. And I decided to replicate it as close as I could - and as close as I remember it tasting.
The original sandwich
A bit of internet digging brought up their old Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/whatsthedeligbg/, where from the start of renovating the place you can follow them all the way through them closing shop after four years in Majorna on 29 September 2019.
I couldn’t find any pictures of the jackfruit sandwich, but some zooming into photos revealed the exact description of the sandwich.
The website is down, but the Wayback Machine saved some instances of it that also shows the menu, that I think didn’t really change over the four years of What’s the Deli existing.
Anyway, the original sandwich called Lemlem, for 75 SEK, contained the following components:
- BBQ fooled pulled-pork
- sourdough bread
- smoked cheddar
- red sauerkraut
First of all, I didn’t remember at all that it was not vegan. Smoked cheddar?? Completely forgot about that (and I still can’t picture it in my mental image of this sandwich).
Then I don’t really know what BBQ fooled pulled-pork is. It was clearly jackfruit, but not really flavoured that much if I remember correctly. Definitely not smothered in BBQ sauce. Maybe BBQ jackfruit means more “grilled with a hint of BBQ flavour”?
Nothing comes up when searching for “Lemlem sandwich”. Lots of (East African) things seem to be called lemlem, from cafés to clothing lines. According to lemlem.com, it means “to bloom and flourish in the Ethiopian langauage of Amharic”.
The sourdough bread clearly had some rye in (I think?), but was definitely not full rye. It was brown like rye bread, but also somewhat fluffy. A square, finely porous sandwich bread with not much crust.
I don’t remember any sauce, but maybe that smoked cheddar gave it some creaminess.
The red sauerkraut definitely packed a punch. It wasn’t one of those barely sour sauerkrauts that you sometimes get. It was maybe sliiiightly cooked to make it a bit softer?
My memories fade as I write this down, so quick, let’s move on to recreating this thing. My plan is to try to make it, look for recipes and then taste them. Evaluate, iterate, improve… win.
First try
_2024-11-18
I couldn’t find any recipe for a lemlem sandwich, so I thought the closest thing to What’s the Deli’s sandwich (and also would make sense with that name) would be a Reuben sandwich - thinly sliced corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, rye bread, Thousand Island dressing. I found a vegan jackfruit Reuben sandwich recipe that I tested (with some minor adjustments).
https://cadryskitchen.com/vegan-reuben-jackfruit-sandwich/
Instead of granulated onion, I fried half an onion, diced, with the jackfruit. I left out the beets and added about twice the amount of tamari and pickle juice to the jackfruit. For the sauerkraut I used some homemade white sauerkraut, but mixed it 1:1 with some chopped, fresh red cabbage and cooked it until soft. For the bread, I used homemade Weizen-Dinkel-Roggen-Mischbrot in Kastenform that was frozen - I defrosted a few slices in the freezer.
Verdict
It was delicious, but the jackfruit was much too finely minced. It was also a bit too flavourful. The sauerkraut was not sour enough - I shouldn’t have “diluted” it. The Thousand Island dressing was good, but not correct for the What’s the Deli sandwich. And it didn’t have any cheese in it, so that was obviously missing too (although I still can’t remember there being any cheese in the original sandwich).
Improvements for next time
- Bit more salt in the bread
- Maybe slightly fluffier bread - a bit less rye, a bit more wheat
- Much more sour sauerkraut
- Add some (grated?) smoked cheddar
- No dressing
- Just pull the jackfruit apart, no mincing in the blender
- Add a tiny bit of BBQ sauce to the jackfruit? Maybe even some berbere?