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

91 CAPRESSE: serrano ham, mozzarella, fresh tomato and pesto

I've had my issues with the Serrano ham before, and you know my history with pesto, but this is a darn good sandwich. It's a darn good Italian sandwich, as the name suggests, with its mozzarella cheese and ciabatta (might as well call the Serrano ham prosciutto di Parma and roll with it), but darn good nonetheless.

This may well be your best bet in the ham department.

Montaditos down: 91
Montaditos to go: 9
Next: 92 SERRANITO: serrano ham, BBQ Pulled pork, manchego cheese and brava sauce

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

65 Serrano ham, mozzarella and pesto

If you've read all my previous posts, and of course you have, you know my history with pesto. I don't particularly care for pesto.

So I don't know if there's something that just clicks with this combination, or whether it was a particularly judicious application of said substance, or whether I'm just in a good mood, but I kind of liked the pesto on this sandwich. Creamy mozzarella with that salty ham is a natural, and the green stuff adds just the right background note.

Montaditos down: 65
Montaditos to go: 35
Next: 66 Manchego cheese, fresh tomato, green pepper and anchovies

64 Serrano ham and fresh tomato (whole-grain bread)

Serrano ham and tomato could describe a Spanish sandwich even more classic than Serrano ham alone, or Serrano ham with manchego cheese. But montadito No. 64 steps back a bit from that lofty perch. There's the whole-grain bread, for one thing. Good, but not classic.

And then there's the form the tomato takes. A typical ham sandwich in Spain would include some tomato pulp, in the form of whatever sticks to the bread when the sandwich artist cuts a tomato in half and rubs it on said bread. Rub a little harder, and maybe add some garlic and olive oil*, and you have pan con tomate, tomato bread, so simple and yet one of the best things this world has to offer.

Anyway, this is close to a classic sandwich but not quite. And let's be honest: As with all the Serrano-ham sandwiches, it's good if you're in the mood for salt, not so good if you're not.

*How is olive oil not an ingredient on any of these montaditos? I'm just saying.

Montaditos down: 64
Montaditos to go: 36
Next: 65 Serrano ham, mozzarella and pesto

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

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

01 Serrano ham

Finally, it's opening day at the new 100 Montaditos franchise in Washington, D.C.! The one less than a 10-minute walk from home! Delayed by an errand, I walked in at 11:03 a.m. rather than the opening time of 11, which apparently made me the second party to be served.

As I intend to tackle the menu in order, more or less (stay tuned for the quantum mechanics of achieving variety as the ingredients begin to get clustered), my first order was "1, 2 and 3." It was amusing that the lady at the counter had to have me repeat that. (I'll be ordering three at a time, more or less, but blogging about one at a time. I was correct in my estimation, based in part on the calorie counts, that three sandwiches per meal is about right. That's especially true given that I now know that they throw in a pile of potato chips.)

No. 1 is No. 1 for a reason: Jamón is huge (juge?) in Spain. And jamón Serrano is a go-to -- not the very best, but very good. And 100 Montaditos' jamón Serrano is ... very good.

The ham is salty, as it should be. The unknown quantity, given that this was my first bite of a montadito, was the bread. The chain calls it "baked to order," a claim I found highly dubious, but now that I've tasted it, it makes perfect sense.

What you get when you get a montadito is a brown-'n'-serve roll. Clearly they're dealing with par-baked rolls and a toaster oven of some sort. It's good for what it is, but, well, it is what it is. I've been known to bake up a loaf of Pillsbury bread-in-a-tube for my supermarket-ham-and-muenster sandwiches, to I'm not going to get all snobby about this sort of bread. It's not a crusty, authentic roll with the breaking-glass quality I experienced in Barcelona, but it's also never going to be a stale crusty, authentic roll. The question mark will be how it holds up in a to-go order.

Serrano ham is the classic montadito, and I thought it was going to be my go-to montadito, but you know what? I'm not sure it will be. The blank slate that is this good-for-what-it-is bread might be better served by more complex ingredients. The other breads that show up later on the menu might be stars. We'll see.

Montaditos down: 1
Montaditos to go: 99
Next: 02 Chorizo