94 CESAR: chicken, manchego cheese, lettuce, crispy onion and caesar sauce

I taste chicken. It's good chicken, but I'm not tasting much else.

Oh, there it is, some lettuce and Caesar dressing, in back. Not sure I'm getting any manchego cheese.

Not bad, not great. One savory sandwich to go!

Montaditos down: 94
Montaditos to go: 6
Next: 95 CLUB: chicken, fresh tomato, lettuce and mayo

92 SERRANITO: serrano ham, BBQ Pulled pork, manchego cheese and brava sauce

Wait a minute. Brava sauce? Brava sauce? You mean to tell me, 100 Montaditos, that this was a potential montadito condiment and you didn't bother to use more than once, and then 92 percent of the way through the menu?

And even then, that spicy sauce is kind of wasted on a sandwich that contains an already-sauced component in the pulled pork. Still, this is a good sandwich. The sauce doesn't become apparent until the end, but when it does, it's clear that keeping it from us all this time was a big mistake.

Montaditos down: 92
Montaditos to go: 8
Next: 93 PHILLY STEAK CLUB: philly steak, fresh tomato, lettuce and chipotlealioli

89 PIRIPI: garlic pork loin, bacon, cheese, fresh tomato and mayo

 

Bacon is always a good smoke-amplifying addition to the garlic pork loin, so it helped this montadito but, alas, did not rescue it.

The garlic pork loin, which has varied in texture and flavor, seems to have settled into the version I originally encountered, which was not my favorite. It's simultaneously too bland and too garlicky. I wish this montadito had had honey mustard in place of the mayonnaise. That could have rescued it.

(I was amused by the menu description of "cheese." You know, cheese. Turns out it was manchego.)

Montaditos down: 89
Montaditos to go: 11
Next: 90 TRALARÍ: serrano ham, garlic pork loin and green pepper

88 TORERO: lomo, manchego cheese and green pepper

 

I'm not sure whether this was a stealth menu change or a mistake, but I got piparra (mild peppers from Spain) instead of green pepper. Which is fine with me. Piparra -- essentially pepperoncini -- is one of my favorite ingredients, and it made for a good sandwich. Not great, but good.

Montaditos down: 88
Montaditos to go: 12
Next: 89 PIRIPI: garlic pork loin, bacon, cheese, fresh tomato and mayo

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

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

63 Serrano ham and manchego cheese

It's hard to get more classic than this combination. What's it doing all the way down at No. 63?

I'm often a ham-alone guy. I prefer ham alone to ham and Swiss on a baguette. I have to send back ham omelets when diner cooks automatically put Cheddar or American cheese in. But I think I like No. 63 a little better than good old No. 1. The cheese is nice in this case.

Montaditos down: 63
Montaditos to go: 47
Next: Serrano ham and fresh tomato

58 Chorizo, manchego cheese, fresh tomato and arugula

My server, Myrelle, told me this was her favorite, and after trying No. 58 I can't fault her taste.

There's a lot going on in this montadito, and that's a nice switch from the often more simple sandwiches on the menu. These ingredient combinations form paradoxes at times, which is the only way I can explain how adding tomato and arugula can turn montadito No. 56, which I found heavy on would-be starring ingredients, into something pretty darn satisfying.

Montaditos down: 58
Montaditos to go: 42
Next: 59 Chistorra, hard boiled egg and piparra

56 Chorizo and manchego cheese

How can something so simple be too much?

The chorizo is great, and assertive. But that manchego is asserting itself as well, which is a little surprising considering how it fades into the background on some other montaditos. So I'm left unsure of what to taste, as though I'm trying to concentrate on two very pleasurable activities at once. (You know what I mean. Use your imagination.) Maybe a better analogy would be a movie pairing two screen-hogging stars. The sausage and the cheese don't clash, but they do compete.

I like this sandwich in a "What's not to like?" way; I just think its ingredients could have been put to better use separately.

Montaditos down: 56
Montaditos to go: 44
Next: 57 Chorizo and tortilla española

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

51 BBQ pulled pork,manchego cheese, crispy onion and mustard

Again the pulled pork is good, and again it doesn't much matter what you add to it. The mustard, as we established with No. 48, is a surprisingly nice touch, but between it and the main ingredient, the manchego cheese barely registers.

Montaditos down: 51
Montaditos to go: 49
Next: 52 Garlic pork loin, fresh tomato, lettuce and mayo

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

43 Chicken,manchego cheese, fresh tomato and mustard

This is an odd choice of ingredients. You got your chicken. We're fine so far. But with mustard? Not honey mustard or Dijon, but regular old French's-style yellow mustard? And tomato but no lettuce.

Whatevs, 100 Montaditos.

Meanwhile, this chicken is different in both quantity and quality from the chicken I had on montadito No. 42. Much better -- like the grilled stuff you'd find in fajitas -- and much more of it.

This is a weird sandwich, but it's not a bad one.

Montaditos down: 43
Montaditos to go: 57
Next: 44 Chicken, lettuce and chipotle aioli

14 Meatballs,manchego cheese and piparra

 I guess I'm a sucker for piparra, because once again the presence of that pepper elevates one of the 100 montaditos at 100 Montaditos. The cheese and tomato don't hurt either.

This is right up there among the best of the meatball sandwiches.

Montaditos down: 14
Montaditos to go: 86
Next: 15 Shrimp, lettuce and ali oli

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

08 Tortilla española, manchego cheese and piparra

This sandwich was a sleeper.

The tortilla was much smaller and much more crumbled than my previous tortillas. I'd guess this is because some investment is going into the cheese, but the manchego is barely noticeable -- more of a background note. And then, those peppers.

The peppers loom large, because this is a bland-bland-BOOM sandwich. Bland egg, bland cheese, BOOM pepper, and it works extraordinarily well together. The combined effect, oddly, is like tasting a really nice egg-salad sandwich.

Montaditos down: 8
Montaditos to go: 92
Next: 09 Tortilla española, fresh tomato, green pepper and mayo