90 TRALARÍ: serrano ham, garlic pork loin and green pepper

The garlic pork loin, I'm afraid, is always going to be a tough sell for me. This sandwich also suffered from the construction problem I've mentioned before -- its best moments were at the back, where I found the probably-too-small piece of Serrano ham.

Montaditos down: 90
Montaditos to go: 10
Next: 91 CAPRESSE: serrano ham, mozzarella, fresh tomato and pesto

68 Brie cheese, bacon and green pepper

Brie may be the main ingredient here, but this is one unapologetically bacony bacon sandwich of bacon.

Did I mention there was bacon?

I have complained on a few occasions of 100 Montaditos montaditos promising bacon and delivering either scant bacon or undetectable bacon, but there is no doubt that there is bacon here. Along with the brie, my new favorite thing, it reminds me of ... something. I'll think of it someday. It's good, but it's a departure. If you like bacon, it's, I dunno, how would H. Ross Perot put it? Like a hula girl in a NASCAR pit crew on bobblehead night. Yeah, that's it.

Montaditos down: 68
Montaditos to go: 32
Next: 69 Brie cheese, arugula, crispy onion and honey mustard

67 Manchego cheese, chorizo and green pepper

I know I've been carping about the omnipresence of the green bell pepper lately, but, man, this is a heck of a montadito. No. 56 turned me off somehow with the seminal ingredients manchego and chorizo alone, but No. 58 gave me strong second thoughts by adding tomato and arugula, and now No. 67, different from No. 56 solely in its use of green pepper, strikes me as a classic. Sometimes in ingredients there is an alchemy.

Montaditos down: 67
Montaditos to go: 33
Next: 68 Brie cheese, bacon and green pepper

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

61 Chistorra, brie cheese and green pepper

This is one pretty montadito. I've registered my affinity for chistorra and my newfound delight with brie, and those, with the added crunch and tinny-tang-tang of green bell pepper, add up in a pretty straightforward manner.

Montadito No. 61 was, however, the first really messy montadito I've encountered. Ingredients wanted to jump out. Basque separatism?

Montaditos down: 61
Montaditos to go: 39
Next: 62 Chistorra (basque style chorizo sausage) cream cheese and crispy onion

57 Chorizo, tortilla española and green pepper*

There I was sitting at the bar at lunchtime nursing my Estrella Damm draft (it was a Friday, and Friday-Saturday is my weekend), and I looked at Stacy, my server, quizzically, and asked her, "Did they change this menu?"

She didn't think so, but I was pretty darn sure there was a "chorizo and tortilla española" offering. I was all ready, when the time came, to poke fun at 100 Montaditos for this montadito, because I was all ready to poke fun at montadito No. 57, because I was served the same montadito 50 montaditos ago. Which would make the name of this blog kind of prescient.

I kept scratching my head as I awaited my order, and finally I picked up my Samsung Galaxy S5 and called up the menu on the Web site. And I was right. See:

Sure enough, some sort of menu editor had stepped in and corrected this oversight ...

... by tossing in some green pepper. (The typographical error -- a lowercase opening word, when the rest of the menu caps them -- is a clue to the hasty edit.)

The revised sandwich is a good one. Chorizo and tortilla española are all-star ingredients, and the green pepper doesn't hurt anything. And, all kidding aside, the old No. 57 probably was different from No. 7, in just the way you'd expect: The tortilla was the star in No. 7, while the chorizo steps to the forefront this time.

I don't see any other ingredient changes on the new menu, but there are a couple of big structural changes. The original five are joined by Nos. 6 through 20, which used to be "Classic," to form an original 20. And, in what I suppose amounts to a subtle price increase, Nos. 21 through 40, formerly "special," join the "premium" category.

Montaditos down: 57
Montaditos to go: 43
Next: 58 Chorizo, manchego cheese, fresh tomato and arugula

53 Garlic pork loin,manchego cheese, green pepper and fresh tomato

Well, that's weird. Montadito No. 52 had sold me on an ingredient I had given up on way back at montadito No. 32, but now No. 53 -- which, on paper, should be better than the No. 52 I quite liked -- has lost me.

I suppose that speaks to the day-to-day and even sandwich-by-sandwich difference in the quality of ingredients and the quality or preparation and, perhaps more significantly, the taster's mood. Anyway, this sandwich struck me as very "eh."

Montaditos down: 53
Montaditos to go: 47
Next: 54 Garlic pork loin, brie cheese and bacon

50 BBQ pulled pork,manchego cheese, green pepper and ali oli

I'm not going to lie to you: One "BBQ pulled pork" sandwich is pretty close to the next. Aside from that pleasant mustard surprise.* They're all good. This one was no exception. The manchego cheese was an interesting ingredient, if only because it looks so much like a pickle. I liked the manchego cheese. I also probably would have liked a nice pickle.

* I saw Pleasant Mustard Surprise open for the Guess Who in '68 in Kitchener. I was only 6, but it was amazing.

Montaditos down: 50
Montaditos to go: I don't know. What am I, some sort of math genius?????
Next: 51 BBQ pulled pork,manchego cheese, crispy onion and mustard

46 Chicken, brie cheese, green pepper and crispy onion

This may be the biggest surprise of my tasting experiment thus far. At least it's right up there with the magnificent hot dog.

I never in a million years would have singled out chicken and brie as a potentially awesome combination. But it was a pretty awesome combination. The chickeny chickeniness of the chicken and that creamy brie. The crispy onion may have helped. The green pepper? Sure, why not.

Oh, did I mention that the Spanish music was back? Did I ever mention that it went away? Sigh. Probably not. At some point after the first week or so, the traditional and appropriate soundtrack at the 100 Montaditos franchise in the Near Southeast/Navy Yard/Capitol Riverfront/SoCHill (South of Capitol Hill) district of the District of Columbia switched from the music you'd expect to Miami-nightclub-disco-midnight-Saturday-teenage-dream. Or something. I'm not the world's biggest fan of Spanish music, but that's what I want to hear if I have to hear music at 100 Montaditos. I can hear crap music plenty of other places. (Yes, I am old. And perhaps white.)

Montaditos down: 46
Montaditos to go: 54
Next: BBQ pulled pork, cream cheese, bacon and ali oli

45 Chicken, green pepper, fresh tomato and ali oli

Another solid performance by the chicken. Green pepper, tomato and aioli are nice partners for el pollo.

Montaditos down: 45
Montaditos to go: 55
Next: 46 Chicken, brie cheese, green pepper and crispy onion

38 Mozzarella, serrano ham and green pepper

The cheese-to-ham ratio seemed out of whack on this one. If mozzarella gets top billing, it should be bigger than a cylinder broken off a fun-size Kit-Kat bar. And if the mozzarella must be that small, maybe don't layer on so, so much of that salty, chewy ham.

But the proportions got better after the leathery ham forced me to bite off a big chunk of it right away. It's hard to argue with serrano and mozzarella. That green pepper, raw bell pepper in previous appearances, seemed cooked this time. If you told me it was a piece of Anaheim chile, I wouldn't necessarily argue.

Montaditos down: 38
Montaditos to go: 62
Next: 39 Burger, cheddar cheese, bacon, crispy onion and chipotle alioli

31 Philly steak, blue cheese, green pepper and ali oli

Now, this is what I'm talking about. Two flawed ingredients add up to something ... not flawed. If I'm going to eat 100 Montaditos' take on Philly steak, I want it with blue cheese. If I'm going to eat blue cheese, I want it with beef of some sort. 100 Montaditos' take on Philly steak is beef of some sort. Insert that cool little "therefore" symbol from the proofs in logic class.

Montaditos down: 31
Montaditos to go: 69
Next: Blue cheese, garlic pork loin and piquillo pepper

12 Meatballs,manchego cheese and green pepper

I appear to have encountered my first kitchen error: The meatballs-manchego-cheese-and-green-pepper sandwich contained no green pepper.

It did contain either a light dose of the aforementioned marinara sauce or a heavy dose of the aforementioned pan-con-tomate-tomato-rub-only-with-canned-tomatoes. Again, tomato is a good thing in a meatball sandwich. And cheese? Of course. But meatballs actually stand a chance of working pretty well with green pepper, so I'm a little disappointed, good though the sandwich was.

I guess I will have to order this one again, and insist on the green pepper, to give it an accurate review.

Montaditos down: 12
Montaditos to go: 88
Next: 13 Meatballs, bacon and arugula

09 Tortilla española, fresh tomato, green pepper and mayo

I was curious as I got to this point in the menu, where the ingredient "green pepper" first shows up. What does 100 Montaditos mean by green pepper? Is this the straightforward American usage, meaning green bell pepper? I was hoping it wasn't, because I'm not a big fan of that ingredient beyond a few applications.

But it was -- raw green bell pepper -- and it was fine. This was also the first appearance of fresh tomato on the menu, and the overall effect was very "veggie." (As it happens, this is the first sandwich in the Veggie Collection.)

This just in: My colleagues at The Post are trying to upstage me. If you want to read about all 100 sandwiches right now (spoiler alert!), here you go. 

Montaditos down: 09

Montaditos to go: 91

Next: 10 Meatballs, crispy onion and marinara sauce