SANDWICH DESIGNER
How far would you go for a truly great sandwich? The kitchen? The local shop? A walk into town? Maybe these days, you just reach for the phone and order one in? Here at Sammies HQ, we’re not even sure if we should answer that question in minutes or miles. Let me explain… There’s been very little any of us could describe as typical over the past two years. The routine has been anything but routine and that thing we’ve always done has become no longer the done thing. So, the story of how far we’ve gone to find a truly great sandwich, at least for this year’s competition, is getting on for three years in the making. It all started way back in late May 2019. You see, the planning for each annual awards and competition begins in earnest with a full and frank de-brief of the previous one. Caron Parry, the events manager, leads the team through each step of the process, discussing the notes and observations each member has made. It’s this constant fine-tuning which we hope keeps things fresh, engaging and ultimately better with each passing year. Having to improvise and adapt to the circumstances of these past two years meant that our plans for this year had to go back to the last time we had a “typical” awards cycle. That was during the heady days of 2019, when facemasks were for surgeons; no one was an armchair epidemiologist, and a Zoom chat would surely have meant something involving ice lollies. 20 I www.sandwichandfoodtogonews.co.uk
LUNCH! LAUNCH! From that review, this year’s competition launched in the September 2021 issue of this very magazine and at the lunch! show, with competitors invited to register to take part and receive the sponsor’s ingredients package in early January. By February, with hundreds of recipes entered, the measure “how far” changed from days to distance as we were once again able to hold in-person semi-finals around the country. And so, for two of the team, that meant it was time to put some miles on the tyres. THE GREAT BRITISH SANDWICH ROAD TRIP “We’ve got 253 miles to Darlington; half a pack of Haribo; it’s March and we’re making sandwiches.” Recollections may vary as to whether these were the actual final words of chief competition sandwich wrangler Sandra Bennett before she and her long-suffering sidekick Josh Davis set out for the first of the Sandwich & Food to Go Designer semi-finals, but let’s not let the truth get in the way of a nod to Jake and Elwood. The pair had already clocked around 35 miles by way of a visit to Nisbets National Catering Equipment
Centre to collect the oven and hob they kindly loaned for us to use during the semi-finals. You can visit Nisbets too at www.nisbets.co.uk.
