95 CLUB: chicken, fresh tomato, lettuce and mayo

It's a club sandwich all right, so a tad on the bland side. I'd have added bacon for full clubbiness, but then again I wouldn't eat any club that something something my member, or however that goes.

Not a bad ending for the savory portion of the menu, but a tad underwhelming.

Montaditos down: 95
Montaditos to go: 5
Next: 96 Hazelnut spread with almonds

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

83 VIKINGO: smoked salmon, hard-boiled egg, pepinillo and mayo

Another Nordic-leaning sandwich on pillowy bread, though it would have been more so with the menu's pepinillo (pickles from Spain) than with the green pepper that was on my montadito.

Montaditos down: 83
Montaditos to go: 17
Next: 84 IBERICO: chorizo, tortilla española, piquillo pepper and ali oli

81 HISPANO: tuna, piquillo pepper, hard boiled egg and mayo

My sandwich has a first name: It's H-I-S-P-A-N-O. My sandwich has a second name: It's -- oh, wait, it doesn't have a second name. So maybe I would have been better off with a Jim Croce allusion. It got a name. It got a name.

Yes, we have come to the "gourmet" section of the menu, featuring named sandwiches and chapata bread. I didn't get this right away, but soon enough after first seeing "chapata" on the menu I figured it was Spanish for ciabatta, and I figured a quick Google search would bear this out. Not so fast, it turns out -- the Webiverse is surprisingly quiet on the subject. There are hints here and there, but nobody seems to have tackled the topic at length, and I'm left unsure whether it's the same bread or whether chapata is a Spanish twist on the recipe.

Anyway, it's good bread, not necessarily better or worse than the non-"gourmet" bread at 100 Montaditos, but different. A nice change of pace. And it's a good foil for the simple and tasty Hispano sandwich.

Montaditos down: 81
Montaditos to go: 19
Next: 82 ROMERITO: shrimp, bacon, hard-boiled egg, arugula and honey mustard

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

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

72 Smoked salmon, hard boiled egg, lettuce and mayo

Smoked salmon without cream cheese was less different from smoked salmon with cream cheese than I would have thought. If I have a choice, though, I'll take cream cheese with my smoked salmon.

Montaditos down: 72
Montaditos to go: 28
Next: 73 Smoked salmon, cream cheese, piquillo pepper and arugula

55 Garlic pork loin, piquillo pepper and mayo

OK, 100 Montaditos, you're just messing with me now on this whole garlic-pork-loin business, right? Because no two manifestations of that meat are the same. I'd have sworn that this one was Serrano ham, but it wasn't salty enough. Maybe the difference in the thickness of the slicing is huge? The meat on this sandwich was almost of a "pulled" quality, perhaps sliced so thin that it disintegrated. Other garlic-pork-loin sandwiches have featured thin-sliced pork and even sort-of-thick-sliced pork.

Anyway, this one wasn't bad.

Montaditos down: 55
Montaditos to go: 45
Next: Chorizo and manchego cheese

52 Garlic pork loin, fresh tomato, lettuce and mayo

Hey, wait a minute! This garlic pork loin is not the dry, bland garlic pork loin I tasted back in the blue-cheese section of the menu. Just look at it! Maybe that's why this garlic pork loin is just now starting its own section? Maybe 100 Montaditos cooks up both a supporting-role garlic pork loin and a feature-performer garlic pork loin?

Whatever the explanation, I am not unhappy about this development. This is good, bacony stuff. LTM would not have beeen my preferred toppings, but that didn't matter. This sandwich is all about the meat.

Montaditos down: 52
Montaditos to go: 48
Next: 53 Garlic pork loin,manchego cheese, green pepper and fresh tomato

40 Burger, bacon, lettuce, fresh tomato and mayo

This one strikes me as dum. So dum I'm not even going to bother to type the b.

It got better on later bites, though, which brings up an interesting point about the structure of these 100 Montaditos montaditos. That's not a big hinge of bread, and so sometimes some of the ingredients get stuck in the crook. In this case, the extremely bland gray burger was all I got on the first bite, but the sandwich worked better when I could get all the ingredients together. Not great, but better.

Still, there's really no call for a hamburger montadito. Let's move on.

Montaditos down: 40
Montaditos to go: 60
Next: Hot dot, ketchup and mustard

26 Tuna, fresh tomato, lettuce and mayo

You know how I said the 24th montadito at 100 Montaditos tasted like a good ol' "tuna-fish sandwich"? Well, looking at the menu description, you'd think this would garner that description. But not quite. It was just bland. Salt and pepper on the tomatoes would have helped. Maybe "ali oil" instead of mayonnaise? I guess what I'm saying is that No. 26 is a lot like No. 21, which it should be, since they're pretty much the same. Sometimes this menu needs an editor. If only I knew an editor.

Montaditos down: 26
Montaditos to go: 74
Next: 27 Philly steak and cheddar cheese

24 Tuna, fresh tomato, arugula and mayo (whole-grain bread)

Arugula isn't a traditional accompaniment, but this sandwich more than any of the others in the tuna category just screamed "tuna-fish sandwich" to me. Very American, which is pleasant but maybe not what you're after when you go to 100 Montaditos. Maybe it was the whole-grain bread. The mayonnaise, of course, contributed to the effect.

Montaditos down: 24
Montaditos to go: 76
Next: 25 Tuna, fresh tomato, pepinillo (pickles from Spain), arugula and ali oli

22 Tuna, hard boiled egg, piparra and mayo

OK, perhaps I spoke too soon about the tuna. I liked this one. Piparra makes everything better, and egg is a better friend to tuna than tomato is.

Sooner than with the shrimp section, the tuna section of the 100 Montaditos menu came around. Or maybe I was just in a really good mood when I tasted this sandwich.

Montaditos down: 22

Montaditos to go: 78

Next: 23 Tuna, piquillo pepper, crispy onion and ali oli

21 Tuna, fresh tomato and mayo

And now we reach the tuna section of the menu. (And the "special" section!) I was curious: Does that mean tuna salad? Canned tuna in some other form, like the high-quality stuff I was served in Madrid that time? Or could it possibly mean an actual slab of beautiful red meat? 

Alas, it was a disappointing least common denominator: Canned tuna, but neither in salad form nor high -quality. The mayonnaise, I guess, made for a mix-your-own-bite-by-bite version of tuna salad. 

I read years back a little treatise by David Rosengarten about  how you should never pair tomato with tuna, and I bought it -- until that lovely tuna-and-tomato platter in Madrid. On this sandwich, I didn't mind the tomato. I could have gone for any number of Subway-style toppings to dress up that just plain canned tuna.

This section of the menu might be rough.

Montaditos down: 21

Montaditos to go: 79

Next: 22 Tuna, hard boiled egg, piparra and mayo

20 Shrimp, fresh tomato, piparra and mayo

That's a lot of mayonnaise. This 100 Montaditos offering put me in the mind of a club sandwich, although really all it had in common with a club sandwich was that mayo and the tomato, and I suppose the toasty bread. 

And I can't say it was bad. Tasty, in fact.

So think of a pretty decent shrimp club sandwich, hold the bacon, and with roasted red pepper standing in for lettuce. 

Montaditos down: 20

Montaditos to go: 80

Next: 21 Tuna fresh tomato and mayo

19 Shrimp, lettuce, fresh tomato, pepinillo and mayo

Ah, yes, the pickles from Spain. Just when I was growing disenchanted with the shrimp section of the 100 Montaditos menu, these pickles that they speak of (sweet gherkins, basically) make for the tastiest yet of los montaditos de camarones.

I might even order this one again someday.

Montaditos down: 19

Montaditos to go: 81

Next: 20 Shrimp, fresh tomato, piparra (mild pepper from Spain) and mayo

16 Shrimp, lettuce, hard boiled egg and mayo

This may be the first dud I've experienced at 100 Montaditos.

I like the idea of the hard-boiled egg, but I saw it more than I tasted it. Maybe a little more salt? I'm not sure I'd ever use mayonnaise if I had "ali oil" at my disposal. The shrimp were lost. The lettuce was the predominant flavor. And "hard-boiled" needs a hyphen.

Bright side: The bread shines through in a case like this.

Montaditos down: 16
Montaditos to go: 84
Next: 17 Shrimp, lettuce, crispy onion and caesar dressing

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