The next big sandwich

[phkrause]

? The next big sandwich

A patty melt at Revelie Luncheonette in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. Photo: Nico Schinco/The New York Times Patty melts — a burger, but with two slices of bread instead of a bun — are popping up on menus across New York City. And New York Times food critic Pete Wells is thrilled about it. "It's exciting, it's overdue and I absolutely did not see it coming," he writes. ? The glories of the patty melt are myriad, Wells explains. Its components meld together on the griddle during cooking. It maintains its structural integrity while you eat. It cannot easily be fancied up the way burgers have been. "The patty melt has stood patiently in the shadow of the hamburger for so long that resistance to the ebb and flow of fashion seems to be baked into its being. It is resistant to change in general," Wells writes. Dig in.