This week’s episode of The King of Queens on Star World had Doug Heffernan dreaming about owning a sandwich shop. The show had me salivating and reminiscing about sandwiches.

Sandwiches in Vietnam are delicious and unique; a baguette is filled with a swipe of super sweet mayo, spicy pickled daikon and carrot strips, raw spring onions, pate, and an assortment of deli meat with the texture of Asian meat/fishballs (the kind found in noodle soup). I couldn’t get enough of these sandwiches when I first arrived, but over the course of a year, I’ve had my fill. (See Noodlepie for more on sandwiches in Vietnam.)

The kind of sandwiches I dream of now are the massive subs my mom used to make for our lunches in high school (in N. California). She’d always buy the sandwich meats from Genova Italian Delicatessen where Bill Clinton visited on a trip to the San Francisco Bay Area. I don’t know if the taste of the Italian deli meats were authentic, but they certainly beat the Oscar Mayer styrofoam at the supermarket. My mom’s juicy sandwiches were stuffed so full of condiments, garnishes (like pepperoncini), and sandwich meats that they’d sometimes end up a little soggy at the ends by the time we got to eat them. Somehow, that only added to their charm. You certainly couldn’t get a dripping monstronsity like that at Subway or Togo’s.

I’ve had some exotic sandwiches over the years in various countries: creamy goat’s cheese with roasted pepper, roasted vegetables with hummus on focaccia, falafel, shish kebab, tandoori chicken, tapenade on Spanish potato tortilla, Merguez sausage, and baked brie with caramelised onions and green apple shavings. They’ve all been delicious. I’ve gotten fat on them.

But now that plain bologna, spongy turkey, and tasteless ham are not within easy reach, I would gladly eat a sandwich made of Wonder bread, Miracle Whip, French’s mustard, Vlasic pickles, and Oscar Mayer processed sandwich meats. That is, unless the king of Queens comes to make me an American-style sandwich in my name.

What kind of sandwiches do you crave?