Best Sandwich in the World

A sandwich is the only meal defined by its packaging, which is a strange basis for a category and has never stopped anybody.

The entries here split into two philosophies. One says a sandwich should be a delivery mechanism — the BLT, turkey and swiss, peanut butter and jelly, all built from a few ingredients that need nothing else and get worse when helped.

The other says a sandwich is a container for something ambitious, which is how you arrive at the meatball sub, the banh mi and the cheesesteak. Neither camp has ever conceded anything, and the grilled cheese sits awkwardly between them by being technically the simplest entry on the list and reliably one of the best.

The list runs to thirty-two sandwiches, from the ones assembled in thirty seconds to the ones that need a griddle and a plan.

The framing is deliberately extreme: the one you would eat every day for the rest of your life. That constraint changes everything about how the bracket plays out. Ambitious sandwiches lose to simple ones under a daily rule, because most of what makes a sandwich impressive is also what makes it exhausting by the second week.