(my Japanese is pretty suspect, but I’m almost certain that’s not a wrap sandwich)
Though I hoped Red Sox manager Bobby Valentine’s alleged invention of the Wrap Sandwich (Bobby V., Renaissance Man, April 28, 2012) was old news, the New York Times’ Bill Pennington coaxes further details out of the Stamford, CT restauranteur.
“So this banker comes in one day and the $4 toaster is broken. In fact, it broke and we had thrown it out. The waitress comes into the kitchen with a long face wondering what we’re going to do because the banker wants his club sandwich. Well, we had just put nachos on the menu and we were ordering tortillas from Phoenix, too.
“I was cooking and I looked over at the tortillas that were sitting there. I grabbed one and put all the ingredients of a club sandwich into the tortilla. I rolled it up and I melted a little cheese on the top to keep the tortilla from opening up. And I said: ‘Tell him, we don’t have club sandwiches today but this is a club Mex.’
“And he ate it and liked it. A few weeks later, my manager goes on a local food-network program and they ask if we have invented anything unique at the restaurant. And he says: ‘Yeah, we have a club sandwich that we wrap. Bobby made it up.’
“People started calling it the wrap, and we put it on the menu as a club sandwich wrap: turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato and cheese. Now, yes, I had eaten burritos. But had someone put American sandwich ingredients in a tortilla? I don’t think so.”