A new generation of boffin bakers is reinventing the sarnie – these are some of their secrets 

The first thing you notice about Chatsworth Bakehouse, the fashionable micro-bakery in Crystal Palace, South London, is the queue – a long line of people and well-behaved dogs spilling out across the pavement, over the railway bridge and south towards Anerley station. 

The second thing is how friendly everyone in the queue is; having made their pilgrimage from across London, or even further (a recent punter came from New York), people stand patiently waiting their turn. 

The third thing is the yeasty, hot bread smell.

Finally, you’ll reach the doorway to be handed your prize – a brown paper bag containing the best sandwich in London.

Or one of the best sandwiches in London, because they are having a moment. We’re talking ‘cult’ concoctions, with extra-large fillings, enormous followings on social media and often ironic names.

Forget about a couple of slices of flaccid brown stuff coated with a slimy smear of margarine, a couple of measly prawns and a ribbon of limp iceberg lettuce slipped between them. 

These are the big, hunky, grip-’em-with-both-hands kind, crammed with thrilling, contrasting and, as one chef puts it, ‘important’ ingredients. 

Pistachio mortadella, sweet and sour aubergine caponata and almond aïoli, for example, carefully layered with creamy burrata and rocket, held together by fresh focaccia. The Sicilian Job was my first sandwich from Chatsworth Bakehouse.

I can measure out my life in sandwiches. Small white quarters of cheese and Marmite, wrapped in clingfilm, made by my mum when I was small. Egg mayonnaise fingers every Monday at school. 

While at uni in London, hungover friends and I schlepped to Fuzzy’s Grub in St James’s, which served full roast lunches encased in bread. 

I ate Pret’s egg mayo in my 20s because it was the cheapest they sold. When I moved to the Gulf it was falafel wraps. 

While working at Tatler I ordered a banh mi baguette ‒ stuffed with pâté and crisp beansprouts ‒ from a Vietnamese in Soho. 

Now, it’s the £10.50 stacked sandwiches made by Chatsworth Bakehouse. Or, at least when I can get one, because you have to preorder via Instagram and they’re such a phenomenon they sell out in under a minute.

This sandwich madness was sparked nine years ago by Max Halley who worked in restaurants before opening Max’s Sandwich Shop in North London. 

He has developed an Einsteinian theory, so every sandwich he makes contains these six elements: ‘Hot, cold, sweet, sour, crunchy, soft,’ he intones, like a martyr at the cross. 

Take his famous Ham, Egg ’n’ Chips sandwich – there’s slow-cooked ham hock (hot), a fried egg (soft), shoestring fries (crunchy), piccalilli (sweet), malt vinegar (sour) and mustard mayo (cold).

‘I believe that, for your brain to perceive things as delicious, what it really looks for is contrast,’ Halley explains. 

‘Any chef worth their salt thinks of those things when composing a plate, but the chef has no control over how it is eaten. 

‘Whereas when you layer up a sandwich like I do, and every bite contains all six of those elements, arguably it becomes more delicious and gastronomic,’ he says.

Where he led, others followed. ‘Max came up with the equation,’ says Jack Macrae, one of the new generation of young, sarnie-slinging chefs popping up across the country.  

He co-runs Mondo Sando, which sells from two pubs in Camberwell and Peckham. 

Its weighty sarnies include the Mondo Has A Little Lamb which contains shredded lamb shoulder, tahini cream, harissa oil, fennel, pickled red onions, pomegranate seeds and parsley. 

Does Macrae worry about the calories in his sandwiches? ‘They’re not something we think about but we create everything from scratch and make an effort to have at least half of the menu vegan.’ 

No ultra-processed nonsense allowed, and Macrae sources ingredients like a painter looking for the perfect hue. 

The day we speak, he’d visited a Colombian deli in Elephant and Castle to hunt down a specific yellow chilli paste.

Like Chatsworth Bakehouse, Mondo Sando started during the pandemic. We were all stuck at home thinking about food, Macrae says, and various people decided to start businesses even though they hadn’t gone to any fancy chef school. ‘

And do you know what’s really easy to make without any training? A sandwich.’

Because the ingredients are carefully sourced and more exotic than, say, a flabby bit of bacon, and the places doling them out have been hit by soaring energy costs, these sandwiches are not cheap: most combos cost around a tenner. 

But a baguette from Pret can cost £6.50, so it’s not bad value. And given the growth of the £30 main course, spending £10 on a fat, posh, weighty and lovingly made sandwich doesn’t feel that bad.

Sandwiches are the ultimate comfort food, aren’t they? They can be the highlight of your day. 

Simple is often just as delicious: smoked chicken and mayo, or ham and cheese (Quo Vadis chef Jeremy Lee’s smoked eel sandwich is a classic example – hunks of eel, slathered in mustard and horseradish cream, between fried sourdough).

However you take it, the sandwich offers a moment of joy at a time when we need all the joy we can get.

I understand this more than ever right now because, once a week, I make sandwiches in a volunteer café at a cancer hospital. 

I’m costing the NHS a fortune because I double up the ingredients: two tranches of ham instead of one; multiple slices of cheese; gargantuan spoons of egg mayo; generous sprinklings of salt. 

Nobody in that hospital is having a good time; a generous sandwich is the least they deserve. 

‘The nurse told me to come and get some air,’ a customer said recently, explaining that his wife was having treatment downstairs. 

‘Quite right,’ I replied, handing him a ham and cucumber sandwich. 

He took it gratefully, lowered himself into a seat and I had to look away as he balanced the paper plate on his knees because it was a sight of such vulnerability: an elderly gentleman taking a brief break from his wife’s cancer treatment, trying to restore his flagging spirits with a quick bite. 

Yet a mere sandwich, in such moments, can provide the delicious, convenient and reassuring escapism that we need.