From Bethesda Magazine: 11 great sandwiches in Montgomery County

An Italian sub, a black bean and cheese arepa, a cold cut banh mi and more

May 29, 2026 10:33 a.m.

What makes a sandwich great?

As I hopscotched across Montgomery County to compile this roundup, going from sub to arepa to bao to torta, I kept coming back to something I first learned as a kid.

Decades before I became a food writer, traveling the country and the world to cover food and food culture, my oracle on all things culinary was my mother. As a young girl, she worked the counter at her parents’ corner store in Philadelphia, whipping up milkshakes, dispensing sodas from the fountain and sending customers to swooning with her sandwich-making magic. That girl grew up to be a woman with strong opinions about many things, none stronger, perhaps, than her conviction that a sandwich is not a substitute for a meal, it is a meal, and involves far more than just stacking a bunch of ingredients one on top of the other.

Among the many things she taught me about the sandwich-maker’s art was that the trick to making a truly great one is—are you ready for it?—air. 

- Advertisement -

A sandwich can contain a day’s worth of calories, it can arrive all but spilling from the edges of the bread—but notice the great ones: They’re never too dense, or overmuch. They don’t pull you down with them. 

And more than that, the various elements are given space to be, and breathe. There’s no congealing, no massing. Each ingredient is individual and distinct, but also, as in jazz, serves to support and sharpen the others.

Every great sandwich thus contains a secret ingredient, one that every good sandwich-maker understands intuitively and knows to build into the process of assembly.

The sandwiches you’re going to read about span the gamut—some are complex and some are simple; some are massive and some are delicate—and the inspiration for them comes from many corners of the globe. But it’s what unites them that matters—the recognition that a dense, heavy sandwich is a burden not just on the palate and stomach, but also the soul. The recognition that (as the oracle taught me all those years ago) air is all.

Fried Chicken Sandwich at Fryer’s Roadside

The fried chicken sandwich became such a cultural phenomenon that even people who pooh-poohed fast food were compelled to try it out. “It’s actually good,” they’d tell me, as if it’s some sort of revelation that a precisely engineered foodstuff that’s been vetted by countless focus groups should be so satisfying. Of the many versions that chefs came up with in response, or maybe rebuke, this is one of the best you’re going to find in the area. Edward Reavis has a sit-down restaurant, All Set in Silver Spring, and Fryer’s Roadside is his chance to relax a little while applying his technical know-how to fried chicken and biscuits. Everything you could hope for in a fried chicken sandwich is here—crunch from the craggy coating of fry, creamy tangy-ness from the slaw, briny bite from the pickle, and a bun that both smooshes nicely and also holds up as you squeeze the thing down to get it into your mouth. Best of all is a thick portion of chicken breast with the texture of actual chicken. I could wish that the meat had spent a touch less time in its salty, pre-cook brine, but I get it: Reavis knows the model he’s up against.

Fryer’s Roadside, 12830 New Hampshire Ave., Silver Spring, 443-594-3029, fryersroadside.com

Brie Cheese at Bon Fresco

Walk through the door and the unmistakable (and incomparable) aroma of yeasty, long-proofed dough baking will have you flashing back to your last trip to Paris. With bread this good as the starting point, it’s no wonder the sandwiches here are so good. The owner, Gerald Koh, who worked for years at Breadline in Washington, D.C., before opening Bon Fresco and turning it into a small chain, is a master craftsman when it comes to bread, but he’s also smart at finding combinations that work with and not against the star. The Brie Cheese—baguette slathered while warm with a thick wedge of brie and topped with sun-dried tomato pesto and a mound of lightly caramelized onions—is my pick over the more popular London broil. Of all the sandwiches here, the Brie Cheese is the one that best honors the bread. And I love the wonderful cognitive dissonance that arises after those first two bites—it’s Italian, no, it’s French, no, it’s neither, no, it’s both. What it is, indisputably, is brilliant.

Bon Fresco, 534 Gaither Road, Rockville, 301-339-8679, bonfresco.com

Brie cheese and Italiano sandwiches — Brie cheese and italiano. Photo credit: Deb Lindsey

Italiano at Gemelli’s Italian Market

The secret to a great Italian sub isn’t the meats. It’s not even the layering or the rolling of the meats, which is an even harder thing to find. It’s the understanding that you must shower those meats with herbs and douse the whole sandwich with olive oil and vinegar to bring the elements into alignment. Gemelli’s knows. The result is the best kind of sloppy—the kind that speaks to exuberance and joy. And what that dousing also does is turn what might have been a load—I mean, three kinds of meat (ham, mortadella and Genoa salami), plus a layer of provolone—into something that’s not the least bit heavy. It compels you—just watch—to scarf it down much too fast. 

- Advertisement -

Gemelli’s Italian Market, 12169 Darnestown Road, Gaithersburg, 240-477-8225, gemellisitalianmarket.com

Mortazza at AP Pizza Shop/Fossette Focacceria

Mortadella and pistachio are such natural bedfellows—after all, there’s no mortadella without pistachio. The combo is best, I think, when neither predominates, as in Fossette Focacceria’s ingenious take on the Italian classic mortazza, which offers a generous stack of made-in-house mortadella (aka pork bologna), and tops it with pistachio two ways: a supernally smooth pistachio cream, and a garnishing shower of crushed pistachios for salty crunch. There’s also, for balance and contrast, a layer of stracciatella, a soft, nearly liquefied cheese. And I haven’t even gotten to the bread of this sandwich—a chewy but springy focaccia that serves as the inspiration for this takeout in downtown Bethesda (essentially a brick-and-mortar food truck: no beer or wine, no real seating) that’s part of AP Pizza Shop, which is run by the Italian sit-down restaurant Aventino Cucina next door. What gives this gourmet sandwich coherence and a synergy beyond its parts—what makes it great—is that it allows for air between the elements. There’s nothing dense or heavy about it. The Italians have a word for something without strain, without heaviness, and that word could hardly be more apt here: sprezzatura.

AP Pizza Shop/Fossette Focacceria, 4747 Bethesda Ave., Bethesda, 301-961-6451, appizzashop.com

Lechon Belly Sandwich at Kuya Ja’s Lechon Belly

Lechon is not just a dish, it’s a craft and a tradition. The be-all, end-all of this de facto national dish of the Philippines, a gloriously slow-roasted pork, is to wind up with an exterior so cracklingly crisp that it snaps in two like brittle while at the same time ensuring that the meat within is as luscious and yielding as a semisoft cheese. Of course, the process to achieve the one works against the other and therein lies the rub. Fortunately for us, Javier Fernandez is a master of the tradition—more specifically, the Cebu tradition, widely regarded as the preeminent lechon style—and this sandwich turns an ancestral art into a great grab and go. The contrast of soft meat and crunchy skin is the push-pull that compels the next eager bite, but it’s the condiments that conduct you through the richness and enable you to finish: atsara (pickled green papaya) for sharpness and tang, arugula for texture and brightness, and jalapeno mayo.

Kuya Ja’s Lechon Belly, 5268-H Nicholson Lane (White Flint Plaza), Kensington, 240-669-4383, kuyajas.com

Black Bean and Paisa Arepa at Arepas Pues

The menu provides a build-your-own option, and this is mine. It affords a proper showcase for the quality of the arepa itself: its subtle corn flavor, its grainy texture, the contrast between the lightly crunchy exterior and soft, fluffy interior. Paisa is a farmer’s cheese, and its creaminess and slight funkiness are an ideal contrast to the slow-simmered black beans. In Venezuela and Colombia, an arepa is street food, a hand-held meal that can be consumed on the run. But here, in a culture where quick food is seldom soulful or sustaining, a good arepa transcends its grab-and-go purpose. And this one all but commands you to stop and savor and relish in the details.

Arepas Pues, 8555 Fenton St., Silver Spring, 301-842-4112, arepas-pues.com

Torta El Güero at El Güero Mexicano

I love a sandwich that risks gluttony, especially if the impulse behind it is simply to dazzle the eater with its daring, as well as to show just how much a single torta can bear. As it turns out, a lot. The light, pillowy bread is the only light and pillowy thing about this sandwich. The kitchen smears on a layer of creamy, lardy refried beans, then tops it with a Milanese, a cutlet of pounded beef that’s been breaded and deep-fried, and, to lock in this foundation, a thick layer of griddled queso. Now comes ham, and, because one cut of pork isn’t statement enough, a hot dog that’s been split and griddled. But we’re still not done. We need the fixings: sliced avocado, lettuce, tomato and onion. You can’t eat it without—à la a taco—tilting your face to the side to accommodate everything. And unless you’ve skipped a couple of meals, you’re probably not going to be finishing it. But the folks at El Güero—who ditched their longtime gas station restaurant last fall for slicker, more conventional digs—have wisely anticipated this and made the sandwich available in a half size. Which, ha, you might not finish either.

El Güero Mexicano, 200 Ellington Blvd. (Downtown Crown), Gaithersburg, 301-987-0376, elgueromex.com

Hot Pastrami Sandwich at Corned Beef King

Jon Rossler has been at this a long time—and by this, I don’t just mean running this glorified food stall in a Rockville industrial park, along with his roving food truck. I mean that Rossler is a deli lifer, having grown up in the business. His parents owned and operated Celebrity Delly, a Falls Church, Virginia, fixture that last year clocked half a century of service and today is overseen by his mother, sister and brother-in-law. What he knows in his bones is that Jewish deli food is Jewish soul food, and that you can’t lay claim to authenticity without being generous and zesty. The corned beef is great but the hot pastrami sandwich is my pick for its lusciousness (there’s just the right amount of fat to give each bite a kind of melting softness, but not enough to overwhelm) and perfect peppery crust. Don’t ignore the pickle spear on the side—it brings the right amount of tang and crunch to counteract all that meat and fat.

Corned Beef King, 330 N. Stonestreet Ave., Rockville, 301-881-4422, cornedbeefking.com

TamangoSando — Photo credit: Scott Suchman

Tamago Sando at Neko Nook

The Tamago Sando’s simplicity is its virtue. And simplicity is hard. When there aren’t more than a couple elements in play, flaws become that much more conspicuous. But this sandwich is pretty close to perfect. The egg salad works only because of the fine chopping of white and yolk, producing a texture that (combined with generous dollops of Japanese Kewpie mayo) is more creamy than chunky, and an ideal filling for what essentially is thick white bread. The surprise here is that, for all its delicacy and minimalism, this is a sandwich of sneaky amplitude, and one that will leave you feeling nearly as full as some subs.

Neko Nook, 422 Main St., Gaithersburg, 240-477-7306, nekonookcafe.com

Roseda Roast at Soko Butcher

Soko Butcher piles the roast beef high on its Roseda Roast sandwich, and that’s nice. But it’s not how high the meat is piled that matters, it’s what that pile contains. In this case, you’ll find perfectly sliced meat that retains a rosy cast even after it’s been pulled from the oven and tastes anything but generically meaty, along with a slice of sharp provolone, slow-carmelized onions and a nest of fresh arugula. Close your eyes and you can imagine sitting before a plate of prime rib—an impression only reinforced by a sophisticated (and optimally zingy) horseradish aioli.

Soko Butcher, 7306 Carroll Ave., Takoma Park, 240-588-3331, sokobutcher.com

Cold Cut Banh Mi at Mi La Cay

“Cold cuts,” in the world of banh mi, is sometimes a catchall for all manner of gelatinous, cartilaginous or even sometimes crunchy lunch meats. The cuts here are light on that kind of texture, and light, too, on the almost-fermented intensity you sometimes find elsewhere—but that’s not a knock against them; it makes for a gestalt of a sandwich, with each element having its say, and no one taking over. It might sound surprising to say for a sandwich of pâté and deli meats, but this really is a statement about balance—the richness of the liver and cold cuts answered by the zing of pickled carrot and daikon, and all of it brought to a kind of brightness by the verdant bundle of cilantro. The last word here goes to crunch—the magically airy and sneakily crusty baguette can be heard across the table with each glorious bite.

Mi La Cay, 2409 University Blvd. W., Wheaton, 301-929-2822, milacaywheaton.com

Todd Kliman is an author, essayist and two-time James Beard Award winner.

This appears in the May/June 2026 issue of Bethesda Magazine.

Digital Partners

Originally published at Bethesdamagazine