It's 1927 and you've just seen the spiffing new Noel Coward play at the Criterion.
Spilling out into London's electric West End — Piccadilly Circus blazing incandescent with Bovril and Schweppes Ginger Ale — you decide you're peckish. It's OK, your companion knows a place.
A short amble takes you to 25 Oxendon Street, just off Leicester Square, where the figure of a Scottish dragoon accompanies a sign jutting out from above: 'Sandy's'.
Your friend beckons you into a wood panelled room, the oak itself slathered with paintings, cartoons and caricatures of Edgar Wallace and George Bernard Shaw, signed beneath by the stars in question. Signs dangle from the ceiling: 'NO TINNED FOOD', 'NO SHELLFISH'. Taking pride of place in a glass case is a large beef sandwich, the inscription beneath it comically suggesting it is a "Model (enlarged) of the original railway sandwich (beef)".
Half of London's bohemia seems to be packed into Sandy's: novelists, painters, composers, stage directors — all perched on high stools, all hungrily chomping into their bready suppers, washing it down with Fortnum & Mason coffee, served in branded Sandy's mugs. Business is brisk. This is somewhere for people 'who want food served quickly, but not thrown at them'. On another night you might spot Charlie Chaplin, Rex Harrison, or Noel Coward himself stopping for a bite. They are among the thousands of 'Sandyites' drawn to this cosy West End joint.
From behind the glass counter, a jolly fellow in a white jacket, and with tall, glossy hair, asks what you'd like. There's a lot to choose from — '60 varieties' as the signs everywhere have it. Your eyes dart about for inspiration. In one corner, Princess Bibesco — teetering at the top of a stool, with her gold lace gown flowing over it — is halfway through a ham sandwich. A chap who must be a theatre critic frantically scribbles his critique of The Marquise, while brushing crumbs from his roast beef sandwich off his notebook and onto the floor. Other fillings include pig's cheek, grouse, scrambled egg with mashed tomatoes, sheep's tongue, hare, wild duck, honey, and kedgeree made with dried finnan haddock and freshly-laid eggs. You've never seen (or smelt) anything like it.
You're still overwhelmed, but the chap behind the bar has a sandwich in mind: try the grated stilton, celery and parsley number: it was a favourite of the late Edward VII, and if it wasn't packed for shooting parties or jaunts to the races, then Eddie would go into a huff. The sandwich, winks the chap behind the bar, is his favourite too.
He is, by the way, Sandy. At least that's what he calls himself. In truth, he is Kenelm Foss — the celebrated actor, writer and director — but a couple of years back, he branched out into the sandwich racket. The concept of the sandwich shop is not entirely new to London (indeed, above the fireplace at Sandy's is a painting depicting the origin of the sandwich, indebted to the 18th century Earl of Sandwich, who wished to continue gambling with one hand, while snacking with the other). But until now the city's been lacking a properly decent place to get one.
Strolling around New York, Foss was struck by the number of sandwich and coffee joints that had sprung up in the age of Prohibition. After biting into a particularly bad sandwich back in England, and declaring "God! I could do a lot better than that!", he was good to his word, and soon built one of the world's finest sarnie emporiums, here in the West End. He named it Sandy's as a tribute to the Scots — a nation, whom he reckons, make the best sandwiches in the world. "Sandwiches by magic!" the press exclaimed in 1925, "Famous actor opens a sandwich bar! Forsaking the stage for a shop!"
Sandy's will go on to great success — extending its premises on Oxendon Street, opening up a new, 24/7 branch on Fleet Street (popular with journos, naturally) and another in Brighton. Sandy's delivery vans will wend their way through the city, feeding everyone from office workers to Theatreland actors breaking for lunch. At Sandy's peak, it will offer 150 varieties of filling. Soon though, central London will become swarmed with inferior imitators that bite into Sandy's' profits — precursors to the Pret a Mangers that will arrive in London some half a century later. Sandy's will begin to struggle, and all the branches will close in the early 1930s.
Fast forward almost a hundred years, and the Greggs now perched at one corner of Leicester Square seems an unworthy substitute (neither do you regularly see Tom Hanks sinking his teeth into a vegan sausage roll here). But not all is lost: on nearby Whitcomb Street, hungry Londoners can be found queuing outside Sandwich Express, impatiently waiting for their fix of salt beef. Sandy would no doubt approve.
Written with help from the brilliant British Newspaper Archive, and the book Stage, Screen and Sandwiches: The Remarkable Life of Kenelm Foss.
Feature image: BenFrantzDale~commonswiki/Allan warren via creative commons.