So what, no f*ckin' leftovers now? 🦃
Where to eat a Thanksgiving leftover sandwich (or buy an advent calendar) this weekend.
Last weekend I was walking down Madison Avenue with my best friend when we both stopped in our tracks to admire the sparkly advent calendar perched in the window of Ladurée. While walking through Bergdorf’s, we saw another big, beautiful one by Charbonnel et Walker. Sadly, it wasn’t much fun inside, just a big box of 25 milk chocolate (also unfortunate) truffles. The Ladurée one too, while gorgeous, did not have even a single macaron in it, just jams and chocolates and candied fruits.
There are a lot of wonderful advent calendars on the market, though. My fascination with the one Vosges Chocolate releases every year is the adult counterpart to the holiday Hess trucks I grew up obsessing over. Every year they get more festive, more expensive, more absurd. This year, its “Nordic forest chalet” comes with a map to guide you through the plush marshmallows, chewy caramels and crunchy cookies hiding in each compartment, as well as a charger for it’s speakers and twinkling lights. My favorite part is that the final, 25th drawer is stuffed with extra chocolates to share on Christmas day. Adorable. This festive one from Neuhaus stays propped up by a triangle holder that also serves as the map of which chocolates are in each little square, which is how I know their very delicious coeur praline is one of them. I used to buy a single creamy-crunchy chocolate hazelnut heart every time I took the train upstate from Grand Central Station. If I knew more children I’d get one of them this Peter Rabbit-themed Charbonnel et Walker calendar, filled with rabbit-pressed squares of chocolate. I think this empty, wooden tree-shaped advent calendar is beautiful — I’m considering getting one to fill with Teuscher’s dark champagne truffles and L.A. Burdick’s chocolate snowmen.
, who I spoke to recently about my love of baking and country music, has been running a series of gift guides, one of which includes even more lovely advent calendar options (my favorite is this star-shaped one from La Maison du Chocolat).Another hyper-seasonal treat I love is the Thanksgiving leftover sandwich. I’m about to go make my own, but if you woke up to a leftover-less fridge this morning, here are a few you can find around the city this weekend.
A few days ago I had the Thanksgiving smoked turkey sandwich from Edith’s in Williamsburg. Cleverly called the Carmela, it has smoked turkey, creamed spinach aioli, cranberry mustard and a crispy slice of stuffing panisse. The crunchy, buttery rye barely holds everything together and every comforting bite is even better after a dunk in the tiny tub of gravy the sandwich comes with. Bring a friend and split one of these with a frozen tahini coffee to share while you wait.
Court Street Grocers hasn’t announced one yet, but they historically offer a leftover sandwich for a few days after Thanksgiving. I had one a few years ago and thought it was fantastic. The spread of sweet potato and the Texas toast took it to another level.
I do not know how one physically bites into the Parm Thankgiving hero, but I do know that anything with a hunk of stuffing that big and that crispy on it is worth trying.
La Cantine built a sandwich so good looking it makes me want to go to Bushwick, which is something I’ve never felt before. The havarti cheese addition is inspired, and so are the stuffing croquettes they’re also serving today.
Raf’s has a truly wild pastry coming out of their kitchen today and tomorrow. They’re filling their wonderfully buttery, crispy croissants with stuffing, turkey, cranberry sauce and mac and cheese. It must be inspired by the OG Milk Bar Thanksgiving croissant, which is made from stuffing-flavored croissant dough and stuffed with turkey, cranberry sauce and gravy. You can see how they’re made in this 13 year old video that is amazing for many reasons, one being that Milk Bar was still a small, quirky New York bakery and another that Zoe Kanan, the brilliant baker behind the brand new Elbow Bread, is making the croissants. They’re also back on Milk Bar’s menu this year.
NEXT WEEK
A question I was born to answer:
Thanks for the mention, Gaby! You probably have seen this but CSG dropped their 2024 leftover sandwich today: Cranberry, Sweet Potato, Roasted Turkey, Stuffing, Arugula, French's Fried Onions, and Mayo
on a toasted, seeded Caputo's Club Roll with “little cup o' gravy.”
No better sandwich in November in my opinion. Thanks for the list!