86 PEPITO: brie cheese, garlic pork loin, piquillo pepper and arugula

I keep saying the garlic pork loin is different every time, and this example was, uh, no different. Or, rather, it was a throwback to my first taste of the ingredient -- thinly sliced and very garlicky but otherwise kind of bland.

Brie did not prove to be a good match, either, so even my new best friend brie couldn't rescue this sandwich. This may be the least successful of the "gourmet" montaditos.

Montaditos down: 86
Montaditos to go: 14
Next: 87 TIRITITRAN: philly steak, brie cheese, crispy onion and mustard

85 LERELE: goat cheese, arugula, piquillo pepper with olive oil

That was subtle and lovely. I could see having it for tea (the meal, not the beverage -- or well, both, but if I meant the beverage I'd have said with tea), and indeed goat cheese and arugula isn't far removed from cream cheese and watercress.

And this time I actually tasted the olive oil. Also lovely.

Montaditos down: 85
Montaditos to go: 15
Next: 86 PEPITO: brie cheese, garlic pork loin, piquillo pepper and arugula

84 IBERICO: chorizo, tortilla española, piquillo pepper and ali oli

You won't catch me refusing this montadito. Let's see: Take No. 7, starring two of 100 Montaditos' very best main ingredients, add two top-notch condiments, and put it all on a bigger canvas.

When I tried No. 7 (and No. 57), I did have a nagging thought that maybe the combination was overkill, that maybe one should get a chorizo sandwich if one wants a chorizo sandwich and a tortilla sandwich if one wants a tortilla sandwich. But no: This is a great combination.

Montaditos down: 84
Montaditos to go: 16
Next: 85 LERELE: goat cheese, arugula, piquillo pepper with olive oil

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

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

73 Smoked salmon, cream cheese, piquillo pepper and arugula

Again I'm wondering about the editing of this menu. The piquillo pepper is not a bad addition to No. 71, but it's the only difference between this and No. 71. For the record, I like this one a little better. Precisely one slice of piquillo pepper's worth of better.

Montaditos down: 73
Montaditos to go: 27
Next: 74 Smoked salmon, blue cheese, arugula and olive oil

60 Chistorra, bacon and piquillo pepper

It's hard to go wrong with chistorra (Basque-style chorizo sausage). This one is again cut, and that helps the formation of the beautiful orange grease spot. The piquillo pepper is a nice touch. Bacon? I didn't notice any bacon, but I fell down on the job and neglected to look for it. So I can't tell you whether they forgot it or whether it just blended into the background.

Montaditos down: 60
Montaditos to go: 40
Next: 61 Chistorra, brie cheese and green pepper

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

37 Mozzarella, pesto, piquillo pepper and arugula (whole-grain bread)

In yesterday's installment, you may recall, I dumped on pesto. As with some of the other hasty hastiness on this blog, I may have been too hasty in that hasty moment.

If anything, I thought the absence of tomato would make mozzarella and pesto even less appealing, but this montadito managed to win me over. If pesto is less than the some of its parts, the sandwich as a whole was the opposite. It had an agreeable sweetness to it. I probably won't order it again, as my refrain goes, but it won my respect.

Montaditos down: 37
Montaditos to go: 63
Next: 38 Mozzarella, serrano ham and green pepper

32 Blue cheese, garlic pork loin and piquillo pepper

This is my first taste of 100 Montaditos' garlic pork loin, and I don't love it.

Then again, it's worth noting that BLUE CHEESE is the boldfaced, all-capped part of this sandwich, and it lives up to its billing. I see garlic pork loin, but mostly I taste BLUE CHEESE.

The subtlety of your garlic pork loin might be better served by one of your less-assertive cheeses.

Montaditos down: 32
Montaditos to go: 68
Next: 33 Blue cheese, bacon and arugula

29 Philly steak, cheddar cheese, piquillo pepper and crispy onion

The piquillo pepper is the star of this sandwich, which is odd, given that it hasn't stepped to the forefront in any of its previous appearances, and given that we're talking beef and cheddar here. (It's also not visible in the photo.)

But that's what I'm tasting first and foremost, and that's not such a bad thing.

Montaditos down: 29
Montaditos to go: 71
Next: 30 Philly steak, cheddar cheese, fresh tomato and lettuce

23 Tuna, piquillo pepper, crispy onion and ali oli

OK, OK, so I was definitely hasty on the tuna-hate. This was another solid tuna offering from 100 Montaditos. Aioli and crispy onion are naturals with tuna, and the piquillo pepper was a nice touch as well.

Montaditos down: 23
Montaditos to go: 77
Next: 24 Tuna, fresh tomato, arugula and mayo

18 Shrimp, lettuce, piquillo pepper and ali oli

This is the first appearance of piquillo pepper on the 100 Montaditos menu, and I am here to report that it's pretty much the same as the now-ubiquitous-in-America "roasted red pepper."

And it works nicely with the casino-shrimp-cocktail shrimp, though I have to say I doubt I'll be revisiting the shrimp section of the menu once I've finished my first hundred.

Montaditos down: 18

Montaditos to go: 82

Next: 19 Shrimp, lettuce, fresh tomato, pepinillo (pickles from Spain) and mayo