No Trip To Brazil Is Complete Without A Taste Of Anthony Bourdain's Favorite Sandwich

A few choice ingredients slapped between two slices of bread: Forget your Michelin Star fine dining restaurants, is there really anything more delicious and satisfying than the perfect sandwich? The beloved handheld snack has come a long way since the 4th Earl of Sandwich (a town in Kent, England) popularized the now ubiquitous menu item by asking for a hunk of meat in bread so he wouldn't need to stop his gambling session for dinner. Since then, his modern-day compatriots eat around 3 billion sarnies a year and there are many mouth-watering variations around the world, from decadent French croque madame and Katz's famous pastrami on rye in New York to the bánh mì of Vietnam. Anthony Bourdain no doubt tried them all, but the one closest to his heart was the famous mortadella sandwich found in São Paulo, Brazil.

The late-lamented celebrity chef, who sadly passed away in 2018, worked at high-end eateries during his career and dined at some of the best restaurants in the world. But he also had a deep passion for eating like regular people eat, and he had a great knack for spotting the best local places to dine. The best part of his globe-trotting shows usually involved him sniffing out humble family-run street stalls and dipping a fork into flame-blackened roadside pots, inspiring travelers to be more adventurous with their appetites. Sometimes he found a dish that he loved so much that he even created his own version, which brings us back to São Paulo's "sanduiche de mortadella," or mortadella sandwich.

Mortadella is a delicious cold cut from Bologna, Italy, made from cured pork flavored with black pepper, myrtle, and often studded with pistachios. It might not sound very Brazilian but the São Paulo region, well-known as a cheap place to travel, received the bulk of 1.5 million Italian immigrants arriving in the country between 1880 and 1930. The origin of the mortadella sandwich comes from around the latter date, when a disgruntled customer asked for more meat in his sandwich at a market stall. Onlookers saw that this was a good idea and a local culinary legend was born.

Authentic mortadella has IGP status (Indication of Geographic Protection) and São Paulo's famous sandwiches uses the Ceratti brand, an equivalent produced locally. The meat is lightly griddled and stacked high inside fresh "pão francês" (French bread). The whole pile is topped with gooey melted cheese, sometimes with a little lettuce and tomato to make it a little healthier. The sandwich is renowned for its gut-busting size, using up to a pound of mortadella.

Anthony Bourdain brought the sandwich to wider attention when he published his adaptation in the 2016 cookbook "Appetites," switching out the crusty bread for a Kaiser roll and lashing it with Dijon mustard and mayonnaise. Since then, the hulking butty has gone viral with YouTubers and Instagrammers cooking up their own versions. Even Terry Crews has got in on the action, munching one for his followers on TikTok.

Anthony Bourdain had plenty of tips for the perfect travel experience, and with all the buzz around the mortadella sandwich, no visit to São Paulo is complete without trying one for yourself. The most famous place to pick one up is Bar do Mané in the Municipal Market; this is the version seen regularly in social media clips with its signature fistful of meat barely contained by the roll. Once you've digested that, you might want to check out some of the city's other legendary sandwiches.

The Bauru was invented in the 1930s when a law student entered a São Paulo restaurant and asked the cook to prepare something especially for him. The result was a crusty french roll jammed with slices of roast beef and topped with melted mozzarella, tomato and pickles. The sandwich has become so beloved to Paulistanos that it was declared part of the city's cultural and intangible heritage in 2018, and you can taste it from its birthplace at Ponto Chic. A similar sandwich with a Levantine twist is the Beirute, including the same ingredients tucked inside a pita with za'atar spices.

Another much-loved option is the "sanduiche de pernil" (pernil sandwich) from Bar e Lanches Estadão. The white-tiled deli counter in central São Paulo that has been serving the iconic butty for 50 years. Hunks of slow-roasted pork shoulder are served in crusty bread with roasted vegetables, sautéed onions, and optional melted Provolone cheese.