Kingston Restaurant Review - "Stuff'd Urban Eats"

I'm not sure there is a more versatile food item anywhere in the world than the sandwich. They can be incredibly simple, or loaded down with exotic ingredients, but the end result is pretty hard to screw up. Really, when you boil it right down to its essence, the sandwich is just a handy framework for getting a bunch of ingredients into your mouth in the simplest possible manner. It excels as a vehicle for flavour because you can layer all sorts of stuff together and rest assured that it'll all comingle nicely in a chewy, crispy, bread delivery system.

Still, there are good sandwiches, and then there are great sandwiches. You know the ones. Super fresh bread, the perfect balance between being stuffed with ingredients and not being too thick to bite, moist delicious protein (chicken, beef, pork, tofu, whatever), tasty veggies, and just the right amount of condiment. Sandwiches like this can go toe-to-toe with just about any dining experience in the world for sheer satisfaction, and the price-to-deliciousness ratio for a good sandwich is hard to beat.

All of this sandwich rhapsodizing has a point. I want to emphasize that when I talk about Stuff'd Urban Eats (272 Bagot St., across from Shopper's Drug Mart) making the best sandwiches in Kingston, I am not throwing that statement out all willy-nilly. Nope, these are sandwiches beyond compare.

Stuff'd has kind of a gimmick as far as sandwich places go, in that you order by taking a pencil and one of their elaborate order forms, and manually constructing your sandwich layer by layer. Every parameter is customizable - bread, cheese, protein, toppings, condiments and greens. It's a neat idea, because having all the options laid out in front of you allows you to conceptualize just about any sandwich you could ever envision. Feeling like a sandwich with a bit of Asian influence? Get yourself some chicken with green onions, cilantro, tomatoes, sesame chili oil and spring mix. Hell yeah. Italian? No problem. Go with the genoa salami, parmesan cheese(real parmesan, not the crappy pre-grated stuff), fresh basil, roma tomatoes, romaine lettuce and mustard. Amazing.

The biggest flaw with the Stuff'd system is that the array of possible sandwich configurations is damn near infinite. There are at least 20 potential toppings, another 15 or so condiments, six cheeses, a ton of different protein options (including premium choices like in-house roasted chicken or prosciutto), and a bunch of different greens. Unfortunately, my brain interprets this playground of flavour as a challenge to assemble the perfectly optimized sandwich. I can't just start ticking off ingredients haphazardly, since cheese choice is intrinsically dependent on condiment selection, and optimal condiment selection is a function of toppings, which are themselves related to the protein and the cheese. It is a highly complex system. The best way to get things done is to go in with a vague notion of the general sandwich style you are craving, and tailor the ingredients from there.

Once you actually make it through the task of assembling your sandwich order, you hand your form over to one of the employees, who puts it together in a few minutes. The wait can be a little long if it's busy (I waited about 10 minutes today), but they always have a few copies of the current Globe & Mail for patrons.

Total cost for a decked out sandwich with a few extra toppings (you get an allowance of 2 toppings and up to 5 condiments to start off with, but I always add a few more veggies) comes in at under $7, which is a total steal compared to some of the other upscale sandwich providers in downtown Kingston like Pan Chancho. In fact, Stuff'd pretty much obliterates Pan Chancho in terms of sandwich quality. It's not even close.

All in all, if you're in downtown Kingston and you appreciate a good sandwich, you need to check out Stuff'd.