Originally published at: New York's official sandwich | Boing Boing
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I don’t remember it from my NYC years, but that was a long time ago and I did live in the bubble that is Manhattan below 116th St. This sandwich sounds like it’s become popular in the last 15-20 years, which is a respectable period. I’m looking forward to giving it a try next time I’m there.
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OK, that does look awesome. 
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Yeah, born in Manhattan, grew up in Queens, lived in NYC until I was 40, I was a bike messenger and a towtruck driver (so I went and ate everywhere in the city), and this is total bullshit. I never heard of one of these until the Spiderman movie. Egg creams are about the only thing that is truly unique to NYC… maybe that and knishes from hotdog vendors, but like bagels, they may be better in NYC but are everywhere now.
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Unless I was dating a Dominican girl from Manhattan, I rarely saw anyone order a chopped cheese. They definitely exist in Manhattan, but they’re WAY more common in the surrounding boroughs.
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The sandwich was only invented 15-20 years ago and it is rather famously from Harlem and the Bronx.
IIRC created by a Bodega in the the then un-gentrified part of Harlem to give something very filling to the local school kids for a couple bucks. Essentially how do I put 2 preformed burgers on a roll in a way that doesn’t require unhinging your jaw. Followed by “I guess i should throw some vegetables on there”.
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Yea, I’m gonna have to say the Bacon, Egg and Cheese on a roll is the NYC sandwich. It’s available everywhere, it’s cheap, fast and everyone eats it.
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So an even lower-rent version of a Philly cheese steak.
I’m in.
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New York’s official sandwich
I think “official” should be in quotes.
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I went to City College on Amsterdam and 139 from 2005 to 2008 - never saw one of these, and we ate everywhere around there. I had a lot of tamales and Dominican food…
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That’s right, I forgot that was part of my routine when I was young and didn’t need to care about eating bacon every day. You can get that in every deli and bodega in any borough.
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Obviously it’s a Philly cheesesteak.
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Jinx!
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I was just about to mention the ubiquitous egg on a roll. I usually have it on a kaiser roll with cheese. Not too popular in gentrified neighborhoods. It’s more of a working-class thing.
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even if i wasn’t a vegetarian, this sounds terrible. new yorkers are so weird, lol
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One can get very suckered in to all this ‘authentic’ blah blah. I go to Chicago, what looks like a hole in the wall greasy spoon says they have THE authentic Chicago hotdog. Tried it… very meh. Are they claiming this is the BEST dog or just prepared in classic way? It wasn’t anything special.
Locally, there was a local spot that who’s walls were plastered with B&W photos from the older days of celebrities who came through town and stopped in for their famous grub. I went once, ordered their top dog… it was terrible… the fries were terrible… I said so to the server… who turned out to be the owner. She told me to pay my bill and fuck off.
Emperor has no clothes.
So official, authentic. every one makes that claim… means nothing except to them, a marketing ploy that doesn’t have to be true.
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I had to research further just what ‘the OCKY way’ meant and apparently it’s a Tik-Tok meme that got its start from a Bodega owner who serves not only chopped cheese but other sandwiches. The key concept is that it’s from a Bodega and there’s large portions.
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My mother was just talking about having a chopped recently, after not having one in decades. Bronx ya’ll. Who can say what goes on in the rest of the city.
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That’s fairly early, but around that same time I was living in Brooklyn and occasionally ordering them from my corner store. Didn’t even know it was called a chopped cheese at that point. It was just that burger thing the Dominican kids were ordering.
A couple of years later when I worked on the Columbia campus they were everywhere. And there was a flight of NYC area food media explaining “what the fuck is a chopped cheese” to the white folks after they started to get mentioned heavily on social media.
It’s not even the chopped cheese’s first rodeo on internet driven backlash. I remember a friend from Philly claiming it was just rich people trying to make a bad cheese steak sound fancy on Instagram. That was about a decade back.
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