Does Sandoitchi’s pillowy prawn sando still deserve its cult status?

Sydney continues to be hit by an avalanche of new sandwich shops, with the arrival in the past couple of months of Bexley North’s Snackshop, Earlwood’s Ol’ Mates, Potts Point’s Salumerie, Surry Hills’s MLK Deli and It’s Recess, Forrest Lodge’s Déli/sia and a second Sandoitchi.

Sandoitchi’s expansion to Chatswood prompted Sandwich Watch (SW) to take a relook at one of this city’s OG katsu sando stockists. SW is a column dedicated to the essential Sydney sangers you need to know about, and the burning question on our mind is: Are Sandoitchi’s fluffy katsu sandos still deserving of their cult status?

Spoiler alert: they are

But instead of our attention being directed to the Japanese-inspired cafe’s pork and chicken katsu sandos – the panko-crumbed protein sandwiches that get most of the applause – we reckon the real star at Sandoitchi is the $19 prawn sando (sando is the Japanese word for sandwich). We aren’t alone in thinking this: it has a loyal following, and that’s because it’s more nuanced than its meaty counterparts thanks to an excellent tangy sauce, a spirited mayo and a smartly devised prawn patty.

Let us explain

Owner and chef Bhas Pureephat is a fan of textures, so he makes the prawn patty by whipping prawns into a mousse-style consistency and then adding in hunks of prawns and delicious sweet corn kernels. He sprinkles in Japanese salt, coats it all in panko crumbs and fries it. The result is a patty that’s simultaneously smooth and crunchy, juicy and sweet, and punctuated by delightful pops of corn.

It’s then placed between thick-cut bread and smeared with Japanese mustard, which is more akin to American-style mustard than hot English. “It’s tangy,” says Pureephat. Then comes the yuzu mayonnaise. Yuzu is a glorious citrus that tastes somewhere between lemon and mandarin – a fruit that undoubtedly comes from the gods and makes everything better.

The result? A dazzling and electric sandwich with oomph and pizzazz, making it one of Sydney’s best.

We haven’t even talked about the pillowy bread

And we should because it’s not your traditional sando bread. Japanese sangers are usually made using thickly sliced shokupan, or milk bread, but Pureephat worked with his cousin (who runs a commercial Vietnamese bakery) to produce Sandoitchi’s custom bread. “Japanese bread is very chewy, but ours has a different texture. It’s pillowy. Shokupan is great when you toast it, and we use that for the wagyu sando.”

Sandoitchi’s backstory and how to get one

While Sandoitchi wasn’t the first place in Sydney to serve katsu sandos (Redfern’s Cafe Oratnek put them on its menu in 2015), it was the first devoted entirely to Japanese sandos.

Pureephat opened Sandoitchi in Darlinghurst at 113-115 Oxford Street in 2018 with his wife Ying. They’ve now added a second outlet, in Chatswood Chases’s newly renovated food zone, which is more of a takeaway offering. It might only have a couple of chairs, but it’s still got the same attention to top produce as the original and, of course, the very pretty strawberry sando.

This is the latest instalment of Sandwich Watch, a column dedicated to the Sydney sandwiches you need to know about.

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