🖊 Sandwich Succour

Samantha Priestley recalls the cosy reliability of her stepmum’s cheese savoury sandwiches.

I was around the age of seven when the cheese savoury sandwich first entered my life. Things were turbulent for me at the time; my parents had divorced and I now had a brand new stepmum. I was pretty angry at her for marrying my dad, but it turns out it’s hard to stay angry at someone who introduces you to an entirely new sandwich. OK, so it wasn’t quite that easy. It took a little time for us to become as close as we did become, but that sandwich definitely helped.

The cheese savoury originated in the North East of England but it’s unclear where it was first put together. When Greggs opened their first shop in Gosforth in the 1950s, cheese savoury sandwiches were on the menu (they’re still on the menu today, though availability does depend on demand). The filling is a concoction of flavours that go as perfectly together as salt and the sea, but for the uninitiated, that first bite brings with it a moment of startling surprise. It was traditionally used to stuff stottie cakes, which are round loaves of bread a bit like bread buns.