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LoginInternational Sandwich Recipes You Should Try This Summer
6 Min
30/03/20266 Min30/03/2026
Every culture has a sandwich which is perfect to grab and walk around with while seeing local sights. What makes these sandwich recipes so great is how different they are from each other, and using ingredients that are special to the place they come from. Like the French indulgent breakfast sandwich of croque monsieur to the American Reuben sandwich, they are sandwiches, but they couldn’t taste or look more different from each other.
The usual Bombay sandwich and aloo sandwich can wait this summer as these international sandwich recipes turn up the heat, or rather the flavour. It’s like the beloved but standard jam and butter sandwich decided to explore the world, getting its passport stamped in different countries, and changing in hardly recognisable ways. Pause at Turkey and try the tombik döner that has tender, spiced meat in pillowy bread, while Puerto Rico’s jibarito swaps buns for crispy, twice-fried plantains, and more.
One of the trending sandwich recipes from Turkey in 2026, and tombik döner is a variety of döner kebab where the shredded meat is stuffed into a bun-shaped flatbread known as pide ekmek. The word tombik literally means ‘chubby’ in Turkish, referring to the bread rather than the filling. The meat used is typically lamb, beef, or chicken, which is slow-cooked on a vertical rotisserie, with the spice and herb marinade doing most of the flavour work. Fillings are simple: lettuce, tomato, and onion are standard, with sometimes sumac-marinated onions, garlicky yoghurt sauce, or spicy tomato sauce in them.
The ones wary of bread will love this one, as the Puerto Rican jibarito uses twice-fried green plantains instead of bread. The plantains are sliced lengthwise, fried, smashed flat, and fried again to create a sturdy, crispy base for the fillings. It was finessed in Borinquen restaurant in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighbourhood in 1996 by adding American cheese, lettuce, and tomato to Americanise it. The original and most iconic version uses thinly sliced, garlic-seasoned steak, grilled onions, white cheese, lettuce, tomato, and garlic mayo.
During the 1950s, a distinctly Vietnamese style of sandwich developed in Saigon, becoming a popular street food known as bánh mì Sài Gòn. The bread itself is shorter, lighter, and flakier than a French baguette, with rice flour mixed in. Cut lengthwise, one of the most famed sandwich recipes, gives way to pâté, then mayo, then cold cuts of pork, pickled daikon and carrot, cucumber, cilantro, and fresh chilli. Banh mi uses a special seasoning introduced by the French, pickled daikon and carrot, and cilantro.
A traditional Reuben starts with two slices of rye bread, and the main ingredient is its thick slices of corned beef, which is topped with sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, and Russian or Thousand Island dressing, then grilled until the cheese melts and the bread turns crisp. The origin is contested between two cities, one in 1914 at Reuben's Restaurant and Deli in New York, and the other, circa 1934, at the Blackstone Hotel menu. A variation of the Reuben is the Rachel, which uses pastrami instead of corned beef, and coleslaw for sauerkraut.
Mexican bakers took inspiration for the telera roll from French bread during France's occupation of Mexico in the 1860s, and began filling the flat, round bread with classic Mexican meat dishes like carnitas and barbacoa, to create the torta. Common fillings include refried beans, fresh Mexican cheese, various meats, avocado, mayonnaise, salsa, lettuce, tomato, and pickled jalapeños. The bread of choice for one of the tastiest sandwich recipes is the bolillo, a torpedo-shaped bread similar to a soft baguette; the telera is flatter and rounder. There are wide regional varieties of the torta as well.
The bocadillo is made with a crusty barra de pan, similar to a baguette, cut in half and filled with, usually, just one or two ingredients. In Spain, a ‘sándwich’ specifically means something made with square, sliced bread and a bocadillo is its own thing entirely. The most classic version is bocadillo de jamón, with the bread rubbed with ripe tomato and raw garlic, olive oil, and filled with slices of Jamón Serrano. There’s also bocadillo de tortilla made with a thick wedge of tortilla española – Spain's potato and egg omelette, and the bocadillo de calamares, filled with battered fried squid and lemon.
There are two distinct French sandwich recipes, and croque-monsieur is one of the most famous ones. It has bread, ham, cheese, and a rich layer of béchamel baked until golden. The name comes from croquer, meaning to crunch, and monsieur, gentleman. The standard version uses pain de mie, cooked Paris ham, Gruyère or Comté cheese, and béchamel spread on top before finishing in the oven. The Croque-Madame is the same sandwich with a fried or poached egg on top and in French called l'œuf à cheval (egg on horseback), said to resemble a lady's hat perched on top.
What these sandwiches share is not the bread – it's the specificity. A Reuben without rye and sauerkraut is just a toastie, a bánh mì without the Vietnamese baguette and special seasoning is just a pâté roll and a torta ahogada without the salsa and the birote bread dissolves into something else entirely. The details are what make them so unique and worth trying this summer.
