The Final Bite: The Supper Club Monster BLT Is Done - Part 2

The Supper Club Monster BLT is officially done.

If you read my last BLT post, you know I had cracked the code on one hell of a sandwich. The bacon was right. The heirloom tomatoes were right. The lettuce was right. The sourdough was right.

But I still had two variables left to figure out: avocado mayo and basil mayo.

It was time to finish this thing.

The Avocado Mayo Experiment

First up was avocado mayo.

In the last test, I tried an avocado aioli. The flavor was good, but the consistency wasn't what I wanted. So, back to the drawing board. This time, I made an actual avocado mayo.

And I did it. It was delicious.

There was just one problem.

Much like day-old guacamole, avocado mayo doesn't exactly get prettier with age. Avocados brown when their flesh is exposed to oxygen, and while there are plenty of tricks for slowing that process—adding lemon or lime juice to lower the pH, minimizing air exposure, pressing plastic wrap directly against the surface, storing it in a tightly sealed container, or even adding a thin protective layer of oil—the clock is still ticking.

That's not exactly an ideal characteristic for a restaurant condiment.

But that wasn't actually what killed the avocado mayo.

The bigger problem was simpler: it didn't make the sandwich better.

Don't get me wrong. It was good. My dedicated taste tester and I both agreed on that. But "good" isn't really what I'm looking for here.

Every ingredient on this sandwich needs to earn its place.

The avocado mayo didn't.

So, avocado mayo: out.

Back to the Basil Mayo

That brought me back to basil mayo.

If you remember the last test, I started with fresh basil. In theory, that sounded perfect. Fresh basil. Mayo. What's not to like?

In practice, the little pieces of fresh basil were distracting. Worse, whenever you happened to get a larger piece in a bite, the basil flavor suddenly overwhelmed everything else.

That's not what I wanted.

I wanted the flavor of basil throughout the mayo, not little explosions of basil competing with the bacon, tomato, lettuce, and sourdough.

So this time I tried something different.

Dried basil flakes.

My first batch couldn't have been much simpler: mayonnaise, dried basil and a dash of lemon juice.

Flavor-wise?

I was onto something.

The basil flavor was right. The little bit of lemon brightened everything up. But I still had a problem.

Those damn flakes.

They were just too big and too noticeable. Instead of disappearing into the mayo, they were still very much there.

Before changing anything, though, I decided to give the mixture some time. I put it in the

refrigerator and let it rest, hoping the dried basil would rehydrate, soften and infuse more of its flavor into the mayo.

It worked.

Sort of.

The mayo definitely picked up more basil flavor, and the flakes softened considerably.

But they were still flakes.

Still wrong.

One More Test

For the next batch, I took the dried basil and ground it into a fine powder.

Then I mixed that basil powder into the mayo, added my little dash of lemon juice and put the whole thing back into the refrigerator to rest.

When I came back to it?

Boom.

That was it.

I had finally done it.

The mayo had the bright basil flavor I had been looking for from the beginning, but there weren't any pieces of basil to contend with. The flavor was distributed throughout the mayo instead of appearing randomly from bite to bite.

Now for the only test that actually mattered.

I spread it generously across the toasted sourdough and built the sandwich.

Thick-cut applewood-smoked bacon.

Thick-sliced heirloom tomato.

Crisp iceberg lettuce.

Basil mayo.

Toasted oversized sourdough.

One bite.

Everything worked.

The basil was there, but it wasn't trying to be the star. The lemon gave the mayo just enough brightness. The acidity and freshness helped cut through all that glorious bacon fat. The heirloom tomato brought its sweetness, acidity and juice. The iceberg gave me the crunch my taste tester had insisted was essential. And the toasted sourdough held the whole ridiculous thing together.

Nothing was fighting anything else.

That's what I had been looking for.

The Supper Club Monster BLT

So, after all the testing, tinkering, tasting and a couple of ideas that didn't survive contact with

the actual sandwich, here's where we landed:

Eight strips of thick-cut applewood-smoked bacon

Thick-sliced heirloom tomatoes

Crisp iceberg lettuce

House-made basil mayonnaise

Toasted oversized sourdough bread

Southern-style coleslaw on the side

One crisp "kick you in the head" dill pickle spear

That's it.

No avocado.

No avocado mayo.

No shredded lettuce.

No fresh basil pieces.

And no more testing.

Well... at least not on this sandwich.

The Supper Club Monster BLT is done.

And it's exactly the sandwich I wanted it to be.

There is, of course, one question I haven't answered yet: What are we going to charge for this thing?

BLTs aren't exactly hard to find in Oconomowoc. Just about every restaurant that serves sandwiches seems to have some version of one, and the ones I've looked at generally fall between $8.45 and $14.50. That's the market. That's what people around town are accustomed to paying for a BLT.

Will we be able to serve the Supper Club Monster BLT somewhere in that range? I don't know.

Eight strips of thick-cut applewood-smoked bacon aren't cheap. Neither are beautiful heirloom tomatoes, oversized sourdough or the ingredients and labor that go into making the basil mayo, coleslaw and pickle that come with it. And I'm not interested in shrinking the sandwich just so I can hit a particular price point. If I'm going to call something the Monster BLT, it had better be a monster.

What I do know is that this isn't intended to be an ordinary BLT. It's huge. It's made with fresh ingredients I've deliberately chosen because they make the sandwich better. And after all this testing, I think it's pretty damn good. Maybe that means it ends up costing a couple of dollars more than the BLT down the street. The real question isn't whether we can make ours as cheap as everyone else's. It's whether we can make it good enough that people are willing to pay a little extra for it.

I think we can.