World's best sandwich — Episode 2: Worth traveling half-way around the world to try

That's what the writer of the following had to say about the boiled beef sandwich (above) at Nerbone in Florence, Italy, which she tasted on March 20, 2004.

Her complete comments, as posted on tastingmenu.com, follow.

Pannino con bollito

Buried amid the seemingly endless stalls in the central market in Florence is a place everyone wishes was within a block from where they work. Because if you could eat lunch there every day, you would. It's Florence's answer to Katz's deli, and it's delicious. It's the panino con bollito served at Nerbone in the Mercato Centrale in Firenze.

Panino con bollito is a boiled beef sandwich that's bagnato — dipped in the beef's own juices just before serving. And it's delicious. The market has so many attractive stalls from produce to dried fruit to vinegars and oils and incredible butchers, that it would be easy to miss Nerbone. It's on the first floor and off to one side of the market. But luckily we knew not to rest until we found it. We could see the rest of the market after we got our sandwiches.

The stall is crowded. No surprise. Nobody knew we essentially flew halfway around the world to eat this sandwich. And even if they did I'm not sure they would have let us through more easily. We had to buy a ticket paying for our sandwich and then fight our way to the counter to place an order. After the order was placed we sat back and wondered what a boiled beef sandwich dipped in its own juices would taste like.

The bun was thick and hearty, a little baguette-like with flour on its surface. The beef was sliced coarsely to a medium thickness. It was placed on the big baguette. They didn't cover it until they topped the beef with a couple of dollops of a red and green sauce respectively. And just before the sandwich was completed the entire bottom was dipped in the juice from the boiled beef.

I was definitely worried that the sandwich would end up soggy. It wasn't. Not only wasn't it soggy but the entire thing defied expectations. The sandwich is extremely warm and filling, and just as you're enjoying this Florentine comfort food your tongue happens on some of the sauces and your mouth is filled with sparks. The red sauce is sharp and hot and the green (mashed garlic, basil, and onion) is unbelievably bright. The sandwich ends up being a warm, hearty, comforting, exciting, kickass bite of perfection. Yum, yum, and yum.

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Hey — you could look it up.

Bonus: many more photos from Nerbone here.

joehead Rena Godard weighed in from Canada this past Wednesday afternoon with this juicy contribution to the Comments section after reading Episode 1, Mark Bittman's paean to the flauta d'ibéric d.o. jabugo at Café Viena in Barcelona.

Here's what Rena had to say about the Italian entry in the world's greatest sandwich competition:

That does indeed look like one helluva sandwich [referring to Bittman's favorite].

I had a similar experience in Florence at a little food stand in the Mercato Centrale that's been there for some 100 years (called Nerbone). All the food there was outstanding, and caused me to put off trying the sandwich, which my boyfriend had the good sense to order first thing in the morning a few days into our stay.

After coming home and looking up the address to recommend this place on Virtual Tourist, I found the following article. Turns out these people like the sandwich so much, they traveled from the US just to eat it. That's some serious sandwich dedication.