Sputnik’s Benny Mac: America, fuck yeah!
This what America, the sandwich, looks like
On a menu full of vegan options and clever takes on ethnic cuisine, Sputnik’s (3 S. Broadway, 720-570-4503) Benny Mac sandwich stands out like Andrew Dice Clay at a women’s studies lecture. There it sits with its $9 price tag, squatting amongst the intricate flavors of the Vietnamese sandwich and the classic Cuban: a breaded and fried chicken cutlet, topped with mac and cheese, bacon, and barbecue sauce.
The Benny Mac is an edible compendium of American food traditions. Where else but in this glorious nation would someone slap all of these items together and then stick them in a bun, like this is Carl’s-fucking-Junior? All that’s missing is a Hostess apple pie, or maybe a Ho Ho, on the side.
Despite its patriotic appeal, the Benny Mac sounds somewhat—how to say this delicately?—disgusting. It’s the combination of mac and cheese and barbecue that does it. The word “cutlet” doesn’t help, either. “Cutlet” tells one very little about the origins of the meat. Chickens don’t have a body part called a “cutlet.” In the case of poultry, “cutlet” usually means a lump of chopped meat shaped to look like a veal cutlet.
Sputnik does the cutlet right. Instead of a large, indeterminate slab of chicken meat, there are thin, toothsome slices of tasty, breaded chicken. The crusty breading looks a bit like Shake ’n’ Bake, another glorious American invention. Inside, the chicken tastes good and fresh—decidedly not like a Chicken McNugget.
What really saves the day is the barbecue sauce. The primary fear with the Benny Mac is that it’ll be too sweet and gooey, drenched in syrupy barbecue sauce. Instead, the barbecue is applied gently, perhaps even lovingly, and is more on the smoky than the sugary side. Best of all, it doesn’t cover up the taste of the mac and cheese, one of the highlights of the sandwich. The salty goodness of the crispy bacon is allowed to shine through, too.
Despite its unlikely appearance, the Benny Mac ends up fitting in at Sputnik, land of the pre- and post-Hi-Dive drink and the legendary weekend Hangover Breakfast. It’s perfect for setting up a solid base before a night of drinking, or to help cure the after-effects. As the menu says, the Benny Mac is “not for the timid.” And this, after all, is America—the home of the brave.
