An article at Smithsonian gives us five history lessons in sandwiches, some you might have never heard of before. Have you ever eaten -or even seen- a chow mein sandwich?

The chow mein sandwich is the quintessential “East meets West” food, and it’s largely associated with New England’s Chinese restaurants – specifically, those of Fall River, a city crowded with textile mills near the Rhode Island border.

The sandwich became popular in the 1920s because it was filling and cheap: Workers munched on them in factory canteens, while their kids ate them for lunch in the parish schools, especially on meatless Fridays. It would go on to be available at some “five and dime” lunch counters, like Kresge’s and Woolworth – and even at Nathan’s in Coney Island.

It’s exactly what it sounds like: a sandwich filled with chow mein (deep-fried, flat noodles, topped with a ladle of brown gravy, onions, celery and bean sprouts). If you want to make your own authentic sandwich at home, I recommend using Hoo Mee Chow Mein Mix, which is still made in Fall River. It can be served in a bun (à la sloppy joe) or between sliced white bread, much like a hot turkey sandwich with gravy. The classic meal includes the sandwich, french fries and orange soda.

In addition to the chow main sandwich, read about the origins of the tuna salad sandwich, the club sandwich, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and an abomination called the Scotch woodcock in a sandwich roundup at Smithsonian.

Dining in an underwater restaurant used to be something only characters in movies could do, but nowadays there are underwater establishments in Florida, Dubai and the Maldives when you're feeling like dining with the fishes.

And in 2019 you can add Båly, Norway to that list of destinations by visiting the newest and coolest looking underwater restaurant Under, which was designed by Norwegian architecture firm Snohetta.

Under has the windows that let diners stare at fish while they eat a fish fillet, but the best part about Under is that sunken ship feel missing from those other underwater establishments:

“It should be an exciting experience, but people should also feel secure and well sitting down there," Rune Grasdal, the project’s lead architect, told CNN.

With an emphasis on local cuisine, the restaurant will accommodate up to 100 people. A huge panoramic window will provide views of the seabed and abundant marine life. 

Guests will descend three levels through a submerged wardrobe area, a champagne bar and then finally the restaurant itself. The name, Under, is a play on words - in Norwegian, "under" can also mean “wonder”.

-Via Independent

As they have in previous years, Salt & Straw in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland is offering special limited edition ice cream flavors in the month of November that mimic the taste of a classic Thanksgiving dinner. Specifically, this year's Thanksgiving ice creams are 1. Sweet Potato Casserole with Maple Pecans, 2. Buttered Mashed Potatoes & Gravy, 3. Apple Cranberry Stuffing, 4. Salted Caramel Thanksgiving Turkey, and 5. Spiced Goat Cheese & Pumpkin Pie. Honestly, those might be good if you take out the words potato, gravy, and turkey. Los Angeles magazine offers a description of each flavor, although the stuffing flavor is different from the company's menu. They do note that

(they skipped that green bean-mushroom soup thing, which was wise)

You can order a pint of each, packed in dry ice, for $65 plus shipping costs. -via Boing Boing

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There are two types of Rick and Morty fans- those who understand what the show's writers are trying to say when they use a dipping sauce McDonald's released briefly in 1998 as a punchline and those who totally miss the point and go bananas about Szechuan sauce.

The smart fans didn't care when McDonald's announced they'd be giving out the sauce for one day only, an advertising stunt that backfired spectacularly, because they knew McDonald's would re-release the sauce soon enough.

The dumb fans, on the other hand, got straight up stupid on October 7th when they stormed in to McDonald's locations across the country demanding Szechuan sauce and acting like fools when they discovered many locations didn't have any sauce at all.

So rather than acting like an idiot about sauce that was a joke in an animated TV show just use this recipe created by Binging With Babish and make your own damn Szechuan sauce!

-Via Geeks Are Sexy

Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) begins today and runs through Thursday (October 31-November 2). The Mexican holiday has its origins in Aztec rituals for honoring deceased ancestors, but has incorporated Christian traditions over time, including moving the dates to coincide with All Saint's Day, the same way Halloween has moved away from its Celtic origins. As far as celebrating Día de los Muertos, we are familiar with sugar skulls, but there are other foods associated with the holiday, like Pan De Muerto.

This traditional, sweet "bread of the dead" is one of the most important recipes for celebrating Día de los Muertos. It's made to look like a pile of bones and is brought along by families visiting the graves of their loved ones.

You'll find the recipe here, and a list of other foods to try for Día de los Muertos (with recipe links) at Buzzfeed.   

(Image credit: Ian McEnroe/Yes More Please)

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Many chefs have a hard time coming up with herb and food pairings that taste good together without doing a little research, but since we don't have test kitchens in our homes it's easier to find good flavor combos by consulting the 'net.

That way you can take your chicken game beyond parsley, sage and thyme and discover beef doesn't go well with basil, mint or sage without ruining the meal.

PersonalCreations.com created The Essential Herb & Food Pairing Guide to help us avoid making bad herbal decisions in the kitchen, and while the guide is by no means comprehensive it does cover the basics plus a few less common ingredients like mango, fig and plum.

See full sized guide here

-Via Mental Floss

It's been ten years now since Steve Molaro tried the Great Pizza Orientation Test. We covered it on Neatorama, just like every other existing website at the time. When Dominoes began online ordering, you could specify topping on the left half or right half, so he tested the limits of the system and ended up with the famous "None Pizza with Left Beef," no cheese, no sauce, and beef on one side. The pizza became an amusingly sad icon of our modern automated world.

In the near-future, there will be no human interaction necessary when purchasing assembly-line food like Domino’s. There may not be any humans involved at all. “Someday,” Molaro writes, the silently judgmental delivery man “will be a robot with a bad mustache and my life will be perfect.” That reality is closer than you think. At the end of August, Ford announced it was partnering with Domino’s to test pizza delivery in self-driving cars, with customers unlocking warming containers in the vehicle using unique codes.

The good news is that this automation allows for creative freedom unrestrained by social custom. The bad news is, well, creative freedom unrestrained by social custom. Robots don’t judge, or caution, you; they give you the pizza you ask for, even if what you ask for is not, technically, pizza. The man who earlier this year ordered a cheeseburger with no onion, ketchup, mustard, pickles, bun, or beef patty from a McDonald’s automated kiosk — and received, naturally, a single slice of cheese — is a spiritual heir to Molaro, and his “cheeseburger” is the more refined child of None Pizza With Left Beef.

I ordered a cheese. Not sure what I expected. pic.twitter.com/3MxyKHNIw4

— Connagh Hawkins (@coL_Merchant) March 13, 2017

That still beats the person who ordered a burger with no everything, received nothing, but was still charged 99 cents. An article at New York magazine looks at Molaro's experiment, it's influence, and the state of automated food ordering ten years later.

David Orr made this apple pie for a local competition. He spelled out "No Spiders in Here" with the top crust. Would you trust this pie? Admit it, you hadn't thought about the possibility of spiders in the pie until you got the assurance of their absence. It's like trying not to think about an elephant.

Methinks this pie doth protest too much

— Jessica Eith (@gyozammm) October 15, 2017

Orr's pie won second place in the appearance category. We don't know if this was the one that beat it.

So the funny thing was, this was another pie in the contest! pic.twitter.com/3uOTPjJEU7

— David Orr (@anatotitan) October 15, 2017

While this is a clever idea for the Halloween season, I want to do it for Thanksgiving or Christmas, when no one would be expecting it. -via Boing Boing

If you're one of those people who likes to pile on the hot sauce until their mouth feels like it's literally on fire then the hot sauces on this chart created by Sriracha2Go are probably too tame for your fireproof tongue.

But if you like a little hot sauce now and then, and don't consider Sriracha or Tapatio to be too tame, then you'll enjoy the control this chart of Popular Hot Sauces Ranked By Scoville Heat Units (SHU) gives you over hotness levels at mealtime.

Looking for a little fire? Splash on the Cholula or Tabasco and savor the burn. Want some hot sauce flavor without too much spice? Reach for the Crystal hot sauce and savor the flavor instead!

-Via Mental Floss

Bon Appétit sounds like a fancy name for a fancy company full of fancy people, but their Test Kitchen Manager Brad Leone isn't some fancy pants culinary snob with expensive tastes- he's just a regular guy who hosts a regular food show called It's Alive with Brad.

Regular host guy Brad is brave enough to host a web series for Bon Appétit knowing what that might do to his regular reputation, and he's also brave enough to go and see how the sausage is made.

So he met with Elias Cairo of Olympia Provisions, who walked him through the process of emulsifying, stuffing, and smoking the meats.

(YouTube Link)

You know the old expression, "The best part of waking up is Buffalo hot wings in your cup?" No, you don't, oh, I guess that's because it's not something anyone has ever said. Ever. But that didn't stop Tim Hortons from releasing Buffalo wing coffee made of esspresso, mocha and Buffalo sauce flavor topped with steamed milk sprinkled with “zesty Buffalo seasoning.” The nauseating flavor is only available in two locations in Buffalo, NY.

Personally, I think this is a terrible idea -if only because they didn't include a celery stir stick or any blue cheese flavor. You can read more about the novelty beverage over at Eater.

It's worth noting that this isn't the first time the company has experimented with Buffalo flavored treats -they previously released a Buffalo donut in 2014.

The Food Network has a recipe for peanut butter sandwiches. It involves parchment paper, a rolling pin, and kitchen shears. And the prep time is three hours and five minutes. The idea is that you can, I don't know, make better sandwiches by preparing frozen slices of peanut butter ahead of time, then just plop one on a piece of bread …and then wait for it to thaw. While the recipe itself got 5.5 stars out of six, the comments are priceless.  

This is a real life saver. Who has time to get a butter knife and spread peanut butter in the morning. Better to roll it out the night before and using kitchen scissors (but not a butter knife! Burn in hell, butter knife) cut a slab of frozen peanut butter instead.

And even more so on Facebook, where you can see a video of how it's done.

She must be one of those people from infomercials who can't pour milk, and find themselves in an avalanche of Tupperware falling from their cabinets.

I've never met a soul who rips the bread with peanut butter.

-via Mashable

What is it about chain restaurants that make such a big impression on us when we're young?

Maybe it's the themed decor, the merch or names like Chi-Chi's, Sambo's or Bob's Big Boy that stick out in our minds, but one thing's for sure- it's typically not the food we remember so fondly.

However, if you ate at a Chi-Chi's Restaurant around 2003 when they closed for good you may actually remember the food- because a Hepatitis outbreak in the food suply resulted in three deaths and the death of a hilariously named restaurant chain.

Saying the name Chi-Chi's was fun, but saying the name Sambo's made anyone familiar with the racist slang term feel dirty.

Sambo's original mascot was a dark skinned South Indian boy, based on the racist "pickaninny" character Little Black Sambo, and the mascot didn't sit well with people after the Civil Rights Movement so the chain had a hard time expanding.

The controversy started to kill off Sambo's, but lawsuits, bankruptcy and health code violations finally finished the chain off in the early 80s, leaving only the original Santa Barbara location.

Bob's Big Boy restaurants got their start in California too, and after a while that big smilin' boy holding up the massive burger was synonymous with Route 66 and the American road trip.

I looked forward to taking a picture with my giant fiberglass friend and taking home a Big Boy toy when I was a kid, but Big Boy didn't bring in the dough so most of their locations outside of California closed in the 90s.

See Do You Remember These Defunct Restaurant Chains? here

Foodbanks are used to receiving really old canned food donations from the back of people's cabinets, and they often receive sealed cans well past the "eat by" date that they end up throwing away.

But when the Cardiff Foodbank received can of Green Giant Corn Niblets from 1982 they used it as a teachable moment instead of tossing it out, reminding the public that it's important to check those expiry dates before donating.

Then they decided to crack the can open to see what 35-year-old Niblets look like.

Cardiff Foodbank was also given a can of Heinz Kidney Soup from 1971, to which Heinz responded by saying: "Wow! That soup was discontinued over 35 years ago. Should be in a museum rather than a food bank! :)"

-Via The Sun

Barista Chang Kuei Fang is quite gifted when it comes to making foam art. She often makes custom creations based on her client's pet photos, but after a video of her cockroach drink went viral, she's now constantly being asked to create insect coffees.

The art take up to 15 minutes to create and Fang charges anywhere from $6.50 to $32 for one of her drinks -making them pretty pricey for a cup of coffee. But then again, it's a small price to pay for a drinkable masterpiece.

See more of the crazy concoctions on her Facebook or The Daily Mail.

Via Oddee