'Sandwich Week' boosts community, small businesses in metro Detroit

At Vesper Books and Wine in the Core City neighborhood of Detroit on Saturday, Carlos Parisi bounced around between groups of people nursing wine from Vesper’s bar and meatball sandwiches from a pop-up by Ayiti Spaghetti.

“Everybody loves a sandwich. It’s the most approachable food in the world,” he said.

Parisi wears a lot of hats: he runs Aunt Nee’s, the tortilla chip and salsa company, he appears on food TV shows and hosts the podcast, “Sandwich Talk.”

But it all started with “Sandwich Week.”

Twelve years ago, Parisi and his friends came up with an idea while they slogged through the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. They would try as many sandwiches in metro Detroit as they could, during that week “sandwiched” between the two holidays.

A tradition was born.

Today, Sandwich Week has grown to seven main events, plus what Parisi calls “side quests,” where participating restaurants offer a special menu item for the week. And this summer, he organized the the second annual “Detroit Sandwich Party,” a one-day festival at Eastern Market that drew 7,000 guests.

But Parisi is most proud of the community he’s built around the annual week-long sandwich celebration.

“The way of the city is collaboration, and it’s inherently in our soul to be able to collaborate with each other and build from each other and work for each other,” he told The News.

Parisi said the Sandwich Week environment is representative of Detroit’s commitment to community and small businesses.

“We’re very rare because we always focus on each other first and foremost,” he said,

Jacob Herald, 36, biked to Vesper from his home in Detroit’s New Center neighborhood. He’s biked to each Sandwich Week event for three years, he said, even on days like this Friday, when freezing rain made road conditions miserable.

He said Sandwich Week always creates a welcoming environment, “especially when you have someone like Carlos [Parisi], who has a lot of friends in a lot of different places. So he gets all those friend circles to come and mingle and overlap.”

While Herald was waiting for his meatball sandwich, his friend Thor Person, 33, had already given it a glowing review: “these meatball subs are incredible,” he said.

The sandwiches from Ayiti found another admirer in Rob Anderson, 45, who said he got to Vesper right at noon, when the event began, so they wouldn’t sell out.

Anderson also knows Parisi through mutual friends, and said of Sandwich Week, “It just builds up a lot of community and you eat a lot of great sandwiches.“

While Parisi is grateful for the opportunities Sandwich Week has created for him, he said, “I don’t want to see this as being like, oh great, it’s a success for myself. I’d like to hope that everybody else sees this being a launching point for something else that they can do.”

When restaurants host a Sandwich Week event, he said, “I’d like to think that they’re seeing a much larger than average type day.”

“But, also, I hope that it’s an example to other businesses, saying, oh, that’s great. We can jump in on something like this. We can do things like this, too. Why not host something that is engaging, but also super approachable.”

This year’s Sandwich Week kicked off at Mudgie’s in Corktown at noon on Friday, and will wrap up with a party and raffle at 6 p.m. on Tuesday at Batch Brewing Co. in Corktown.

Ladder 4 Wine Bar will host Sunday’s event, followed by Rocco’s on Monday and Tall Tree Cafe in Ferndale on Tuesday. The festivities also include a ticketed dinner at 6 p.m. on Sunday at the Dakota Inn.

Parisi has tried hundreds of unique sandwiches over the years, but when asked to pick a favorite, he returned to his childhood in Mexico City.

When he was a kid, Parisi said he would eat “pan Bimbo” — which he called “the most standard white bread” — slathered in mustard and mayonnaise then loaded up with Mexican boiled ham and cheese, before being warmed in the microwave.

Parisi said, “What’s the one sandwich I probably crave the most? It might actually be that.”

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