Sandwich of the Week: Cemitas at Cemitas y Clayudas Pal Cabron

Your weekly look at the best thing between sliced bread.

Not Available Lead
Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Not Available Lead
By Joy Yoon

I understand that “Sandwich of the Week” is not a plural, but when I walked into Cemitas y Clayudas Pal Cabron, I don’t know what came over me. I’d like to think that it was some twisted version of Montezuma's Revenge. The kind that makes you order too much and devour every last bit, leaving you with nothing but a food baby and guilt. I’m not even sure what made me order three cemitas, I may have blacked out at some point, but the end results were more than memorable. “La Mamacita,” “La Bronca,” (pictured above) and “La Muy Muy” may sound like construction site catcalls, but please, these cemitas (Mexican sandwiches from Puebla) deserve a little more respect.

Served on a toasted sesame-seed egg roll (which differentiates a cemitas from a torta), my cemitas were filled with puerco (pork) prepared three different ways: moist carnitas (La Mamacita), a thin breaded Milanesa (La Muy Muy), and spicy shredded pork loin (La Bronca: my favorite of the three). Not only are the toppings the tops—panela (a Mexican cheese with a mozzarella consistency), avocado, onions, cilantro, papalo (summer cilantro), spicy carrots (on La Muy Muy), and your choice of chipotle or jalapeno—but they hollow out the roll in order to fill it with even more pork. There is a God. For the $4.99-6.99 price tag, ($2 extra if you add the cheese imported from Puebla), these tres amigas of deliciousness will even leave you with a little extra dinero in your wallet. Combine that with the porky goodness, and what you have is pretty much a “cuadrangular” (that’s Spanish for home run).

Cemitas y Clayudas Pal Cabron
3337 W. 8th St.
Los Angeles (Koreatown)

Latest in Pop Culture