'Can it be two words?'

So it’s another Sandwich Party, is it?

For the first time, I am letting someone else do the sandwich construction for this Sandwich Party. At Sandwich Parties past I painstakingly constructed, or reminisced about, or at least observed the preparation of, sandwiches to which I had some sort of deep psychic connection.

This, on the other hand, is the Leprechaun Burger.

The plan had been to run some errands downtown and cap the morning with lunch at Murphy’s Irish Pub, in the heart of downtown Sofia. Just to the left of Murphy’s's front door is a brass plaque attesting to the fact that it was constructed by genuine Irishmen and lovingly reconstructed here in the heart of the Balkans, Leprechaun Burgers and all. Given that Magda has done little but extol the virtues of the Leprechaun Burger since having one last spring, I fully expected that we would order two, allowing me to photograph the pair of them with the Guinness tap in background bokeh and puckishly title this post ‘Sandwich Parity’, but at the last minute she pulled ye olde switcheroo on me and called for an open face smoked salmon & scrambled egg confection.

This sandwich treason aside, we had a very pleasant lunch, Leprechaun Burger notwithstanding. It is exceedingly unusual for us to be able to get away at all, and this being our second lunch out in a month makes this autumn a high-water mark for shaking the kids from around our ankles. Murphy’s, as the plaque should attest, is plenty authentic, right down to the eye-watering smoke and rugby projected onto the wall. They certainly know how to wreck a burger.

TASTING NOTES

The sandwich arrives with an accompanying miasma of tobacco fumes and liberal ‘f*cks’ and ‘c*nts’. A tiny wee coy stoneware pitcher of ketchup gestures helplessly beside a pile of coolish steak-cut fries, while a coterie of recently frozen onion rings gazes jealously askance. Two reasonable looking slices of plum tomato on the plate give the impression that they wish to have no truck with the burger, which, upon opening, is revealed to be dressed with two shy ringlets of onion and a rather embarrassed pickle slice. The burger hunkers beneath its doughy upper bun. On picking the sandwich up, one is struck by the bun’s surprising amount of give. A squeeze to consolidate … the first bite reveals a puckish quality — not the Midsummer Night’s Dream puckish, the Canadian winter sporting spectacle puckish. This first impression is borne out upon further investigation, if not by actual eating to the usual conclusion.

It is a pub burger. It is accompanied by beer not much warmer than the pub fries, beer charged with nitrogen, whose creamy, foamy head forgives all. Almost all.

I may have failed to point out that this sandwich is called the Leprechaun Burger.

I hope that some sort of bonus points will be awarded for my refraining from gratuitous insertion of the word ‘shillelagh’ into this post.

* From a Tina Fey interview. Asked for the funniest word, she responded with the title’s question and ‘hamburger sandwich.’

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