A weekly sandwich review · Cincinnati, Ohio

Bread&Butter
Connects

Food is the connective tissue in all things. It is the great equalizer. So we booked our one‑on‑one at a sandwich counter and never looked back.

Every week, two coworkers — Taylor MacDonald and Shay Scarberry — sit down over a sandwich, talk about work and everything else, and score what we ate. We are on a mission to find the best sandwich in Cincinnati.

Illustrated stacked sandwich with a Bread & Butter flag

How the ritual works

Same meeting we always had. Better table.

  1. 01

    Pick a shop

    Neighborhood deli, gas station cooler, counter with four stools. No chains.

  2. 02

    Have the one‑on‑one

    Wins, blockers, the stuff that never fits in a status update. Napkins double as notepads.

  3. 03

    Score the sandwich

    Five categories, ten points each. Then it goes on the board for good.

Latest review

Knuckles Deli

The Italian Beef, dry with the jus on the side, and the Italian, plus the potato salad

Takeout this time — I was stuck on a call, so Shay drove down to Riverside Drive and brought it back to the office. Cincinnati’s self-declared home for Italian beef serves a mountain of it, with pickled hot peppers that mean it and a ramekin of jus on the side. The beef is dry and the flavor is all there, which is a weird sentence to write. Pour the jus over it and it gets two points better. Neither sandwich came cut in half. We noticed.

  • Bread 8
  • Build 6
  • Mess 7
  • Value 8
  • Talk 10

Total 39/50

Read the field notes →

The Italian Beef from Knuckles, cut in two on foil-lined paper, a mountain of thin-sliced beef piled on a soft roll under pickled hot peppers, jus soaking into the wrapper
East End · 9/8/26 · the Italian Beef, jus applied

The Board

6 in. 46 weeks to go.

  1. 1 Carl’s Deli Salami Mommy + Godfather · Hyde Park WK 04 47
  2. 2 ’Wich Doctor Angry Bird + Cuban + Reuben + Muffuletta · Newport WK 03 45
  3. 3 Danny Boy Timmy Ray + Sponziello · Mariemont WK 01 43
  4. 4 J & W Little Italy + New Yorker · Norwood WK 02 43
  5. 5 Young Buck Deli New Deal + Classic Club · Over-the-Rhine WK 05 40
  6. 6 Knuckles Deli Italian Beef + Italian · East End WK 06 39
  7. 7 Alveo ON DECK ——

Fifty points, five ways

Bread
Does it hold, or does it surrender in the parking lot?
Build
Ratio, seasoning, and whether anyone thought about the last bite.
Mess
Napkin count. A little chaos is a good sign.
Value
What you paid against how full you left.
Talk
The real category. Did the table make the conversation better?

The map fills in

One pin a week. Over the Rhine to Norwood to whatever we find on the way. If a shop is missing, that is a scheduling problem, not an opinion.

Got a spot? Send it over. ↓

Six in. Each dot is a stop — open one for the write-up.

Two people, one sandwich each

Shay Scarberry

Shay Scarberry

Orders the thing he has never heard of

Keeps the notes, keeps me honest, has strong feelings about pickle placement.

Taylor C. MacDonald

Taylor C. MacDonald

Always the Italian, for science

Partner and CTO at Ample, a digital agency here in Cincinnati. Booked the first lunch on a hunch that a better table makes a better conversation.