80 Anchovies,manchego cheese, piquillo pepper, arugula and mayo

Mercifully, the menu has run out of anchovies. If you have to eat an anchovy sandwich*, this is one of the better ones. The manchego helps.

*You don't have to eat an anchovy sandwich. It's in the Geneva Conventions.

Montaditos down: 80
Montaditos to go: 20
Next: 81 HISPANO: tuna, piquillo pepper, hard boiled egg and mayo

79 Anchovies, brie cheese, piquillo pepper and arugula

If there's one ingredient in which I'd invest some hope in taming the mighty anchovy, it's my new friend brie. Unfortunately, I did not get to fully test this hypothesis. The sandwich I was served contained some brie (it's at the right), but most of its cheese was goat cheese, in pearled-crumble form, as the photo shows. (Maybe they ran out of brie and compensated with the chevre?)

I guess I did get my wish of another sandwich with goat cheese.

For the record, this No. 79-with-an-asterisk was better than the previous anchovy sandwiches, though it was still an anchovy sandwich.

Montaditos down: 79
Montaditos to go: 21
Next: 80 Anchovies, manchego cheese, piquillo pepper, arugula and mayo

78 Anchovies, fresh tomato, hard boiled egg and mayo

To the extent that I'll take whatever I can get in terms of diluting the powerful saltiness of the anchovies, No. 78 with its hard-boiled egg is marginally better than No. 77 with its pickles. Suffice it to say, however, that I will not be ordering anchovy montaditos once my tour of 100 is done.

Montaditos down: 78
Montaditos to go: 22
Next: 79 Anchovies, brie cheese, piquillo pepper and arugula

77 Anchovies, fresh tomato, mayo and pepinillo

This is an anchovy sandwich. There's no sugarcoating that. And I hope I never have to taste a sugar-coated anchovy.

Was there pepinillo there? Looks more like green pepper in the picture. Doesn't matter. All I tasted was anchovies. And although I'm pretty open-minded about anchovies, unlike your stereotypical takeout-pizza orderer, anchovies should not the main ingredient on a sandwich.

Montaditos down: 77
Montaditos to go: 23
Next: 78 Anchovies, fresh tomato, hard boiled egg and mayo

70 Goat cheese, fresh tomato, lettuce and anchovies

This sandwich is so odd, I couldn't even get an in-focus picture of it. Well, at least the idea is weird. I love goat cheese. Love it. The goatier the better. And so when I saw that 100 Montaditos used goat cheese on only two sandwiches and put anchovies on one of them -- the only one in the regular-bread collection -- I scratched my head. What a missed opportunity for a great ingredient.

If you don't like anchovies, there you go. If you like anchovies, you might still acknowledge their ability to overwhelm other ingredients and wonder why they would be coupled with the more delicate delicacy that is the cheese of the goat.

I can't say I disliked this montadito. There was something illicitly satisfying in enjoying two outlaw ingredients at once. Still, it would be nice if goat cheese got a chance to shine in some other sandwiches, with less-assertive partners.

Montaditos down: 70
Montaditos to go: 30
Next: 71 Smoked salmon, cream cheese and arugula

66 Manchego cheese, fresh tomato, green pepper and anchovies

Kind of sneaked that last ingredient in there, didn't you, 100 Montaditos?

I would have gone in another direction. The introduction of manchego cheese as a main ingredient would seem to call for less-flamboyant accompaniments, perhaps a vegetarian celebration, but there it is, anchovies, and you certainly do taste anchovies.

This part of the menu, or at least my recent quantum-physics-based orders, seem to have landed me in a deep well of green bell peppers, as in an inexpertly tossed salad, but in this case I welcome my Capsicum annuum overlords. That crispy green bite helps put the anchovies in their place.

This isn't a great montadito, but it's better than it might sound.

Montaditos down: 66
Montaditos to go: 34
Next: 67 Manchego cheese, chorizo and green pepper

34 Blue cheese, anchovies, lettuce and fresh tomato (whole-grain bread)

The first bite of this picky-eaters-need-not-apply 100 Montaditos sandwich started out interesting but things got very salty very fast.

I'm thinking blue cheese and anchovies should generally be kept apart, and both -- especially anchovies -- work better in supporting roles.

Montaditos down: 34
Montaditos to go: 66
Next: 35 Blue cheese, arugula, crispy onion and honey mustard