Notable Sandwiches #115 (Spooky Edition): Medianoche
Welcome back to Notable Sandwiches, the feature where I, alongside my editor David Swanson, creep through the haunted garden of Wikipedia’s List of Notable Sandwiches, in alphabetical order. Today, just in time for the end of spooky season: the medianooooooooooooche!!! AAAA!
It’s a Cuban sandwich. Really, that’s the fundamental deal with the medianoche—it’s just a Cubano, a sandwich whose backstory David has already explored at length. The only real distinction is that it’s on medianoche bread, which is an eggier variety, similar to challah or brioche.
But—and here’s where things get spooky—it’s named after the witching hour. That darkest of times, long before dawn’s return, when who knows what ghosts and ghouls are a-roaming through the deserted streets… because medianoche means midnight!
Some might say that this sandwich is named the medianoche because it’s a delicious and filling midnight snack—fuel to keep clubbing in Old Havana.
It’s because this sandwich is haunted.
Served on enriched bread? What’s the bread enriched with? Egg and sugar maybe—or ECTOPLASM?
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What’s hidden in the dark heart of this seemingly banal assemblage of pork and pickle, mustard and cheese? What eerie and eldritch appearances can you expect with your medianoche in hand?
The ghost of pickles past? The porcine shades of all the pigs who died for our nocturnal indulgence? Fidel Castro appearing out of the darkness to steal your sandwich? The CIA couldn’t stop him AND NEITHER COULD DEATH ITSELF!
What’s more, the sandwich is popular in the Cuban communities of Florida, which adds all sorts of ghostly possibilities. Swamp ghosts. Skunk ape ghosts. Gator ghosts. Florida Keys-style ghosts who show up to capsize your boatful of cocaine because they’re assholes like that. The fleshly incarnation of a demon named Meatball Ron, who will definitely steal your sandwich.
Some might say that Halloween was “technically yesterday” and this column is therefore “stale even before publication.” To these haters I say: you’re probably the type of jerk who already has their Christmas decorations up. Spooky season can extend a day for the fey and unexplored horrors of the ultimate midnight snack.
Deep in the bowels of night… when spirits march unquiet under the thin rind of the moon… when ravens feast on the dead… when graveyards are gateways… lurks the medianoche, all the more chilling for its apparent banality. Pressed within its sweet carapace is a nightmare of untold terror…
Speaking of which, one variant on this sandwich, named for Elena Ruz, a Cuban socialite whose heyday on the town came in the late 1920s, features sweet medianoche bread with… turkey… and cream cheese… and STRAWBERRY JAM.
THE HORROR!!!
Go to bed early tonight, my children… or else the medianoche will get you. If you’ve roused a witch or upset a ghost, made a deal with a devil or disturbed the restless forces of darkness, the sandwich you so blithely swallow… might just swallow YOU.
Adios until medianOooooOOOOOooooooche,
Talia
