Soup, Salad, Controversy

 The game is "soup, salad, and <controversy already>," where we try to classify every savory food (if not every food) into the categories of soup, salad, or wrap (if you are me)/sandwich (if you are my wife). We starting the game -- or perhaps you'd prefer "conversation starter" -- with sandwich as the category, but my thinking has evolved. 

My favorite argument involves imagining a super-large burger, the type used in food challenges. When it is so big that the only way it can be eaten is to pick at the pieces, then the dish is a salad. And (and!) it is only when the middle contents are worked down enough that the bread can hold both sides that you have a"sandwich," but that goes to show how important it is for the carbohydrate to wrap around the contents if you are to no longer have a salad -- discrete bits to pick at, often best with a fork, hence the fruit salad, noodle salad, and the like. 

Functionally, if you cannot get your hand around the container of the food stuff, then you have a salad. If you're not *wrapping* solids, then you're *forking* them (at least by proper etiquette). And this leads to one of my most bold claims under the framework: fried chicken ... is a wrap. The carbohydrates wrap around the meat, and (and!) it is eaten by hand[1]. All of this demonstrates the problem with calling the category in question "sandwich." It is easy to see why fried chicken is a wrap, but the baggage of the concept of a sandwich, with it's hunking slices of bread on both sides impedes our clearest understanding. 

Another example: the corn dog. It's a wrap, clearly. But "sandwich" just introduces unnecessary mental friction. 

I conclude with a list of exercises for the reader:

french fries
pizza
sushi
(Asian style) dumplings

And I must confess that I am not sure about dumplings. I may never be.  They are the case study in chopsticks deliberately not finger foods and they resist the wrap/salad binary with a quiet, steamed and sticky confidence. They exist on their own terms.

But ravioli? Pierogies? Let's be honest: those are salads. Piled on a plate, dressed in sauce, stabbed with a fork. Salads.

I read this to my wife. She told me that ravioli is a sandwich.

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[1] Fried chicken is eaten by hand. But chicken fried steak has to be eaten with a fork (thus salad). Since one of my only regular readers is from New Zealand, and I know "chicken fried steak" is a regional dish, I digress to explain it: Despite the name, it's not chicken. It's a beef steak, pounded thin, breaded like fried chicken, and deep-fried. It is usually served smothered in white gravy with mashed potatoes. Here's a British bloke doing a food challenge with chicken fried steak at a restaurant one town south of me, and here's a feisty girl doing the same. There is a final twist to the tale of the chicken fried steak; around here we even have strips of steak cut up and then dipped and fried, making "chicken fried steak strips." They can be held in hand and dipped. They are wraps.