I'm not as fussy about sandwiches as Reginald Peterson, the Florida resident who called the police when Subway forgot to put the sauce on his sandwich.

Perhaps not.

I do find it ridiculous that so many places can screw up something as simple as "bread, a spread, a filling and a garnish" as the mavens at the CIA call it. Let's start with the bread. Good idea, but where in Hong Kong can we find some? Making it seven different colours and giving them different names still doesn't make the over chewy and sweet, almost cake-like substance used at the lower price range into bread.

Bagels seem to be getting popular here and it is some time since I was last offered a toasted bagel when the server went off and toasted the crusty hoop of dough AND the smoked salmon and lettuce inside it. At least the filling there was approximately right. I recently bought a bagel for some acquaintances at Café O and the only option was one with chicken, ham and spinach, an odd combination given the breadstuff's roots in Eastern European Jewry. The server seemed astonished at the idea of smoked salmon on a bagel.

Let's Stick Together

Pay more and you get a better slice but then the sandwich artist has to use it properly. A club sandwich has to have three layers of bread - Pullman loaf recommended - it's the third layer that makes it a club. Kaiser Deli at Star Ferry please take note. Yeah, I get the Kaiser concept but if you can't make a triple decker from a Kaiser roll, don't put it on the menu. While Kaiser's club wasn't so bad in terms of filling, it only had a spread on half of the roll.

Picky? Maybe but a sandwich is also a piece of architecture. If you don't have a spread the filling falls out. Thank you Café O. The people at Freshness Burger have an even odder idea about spreads. The company's hotdog comes with onions. Well, naturally you say but these onions are uncooked (the small piece of brown peel was particularly unappealing). No grease from the onions, nothing to hold everything in place, a lot of raw onion on the table top. No doubt the absence of fat is supposed to be healthy but this is a hot dog we're talking about. You want healthy, eat a salad.

The people at Deli France tried to put in half a salad when I ordered their hot dog. The iceberg lettuce, presumably named after the serving temperature, tomato and mayonnaise were quite an unusual addition to this dish. Wait - Deli France! Now the French kitchen has a few classic sandwiches, most of them involving gruyere and ham, and very few of these are on the Les Classique Sandwiches board at Deli France. Le Hot Dog? Oh, s'il vous puuuuurlâit!

One with Everything

Back to the yit gau itself - these should follow a simple and well-known formula. Soft roll (not baguette), tube steak, greasy onions (not lettuce and tomatoes) and optional mustard and ketchup (mayonnaise!?!). If you can't do that, take it off the menu.

Another sandwich given short-shrift in Hong Kong is the venerable roast beef on rye with horseradish. Full marks to Marks and Sparks for putting the beef on the right bread. Pity there was so little of it and that they felt obliged to tone down the horseradish with mayonnaise. And what was that nutty, peppery and so wrong arugula doing there? Perhaps it was meant to look healthy. At least there was some horseradish, which is about as common as rocking horse poop in the rest of the territory.

This sandwich also scored points for not containing my hidden bugbear, the unannounced slice of tomato (too many culprits to mention). What has this imbecile got against the poor tomato, you ask? A BLT should be full of tomatoes, the clue's in the name, but if you're not expecting it biting into a slice of tomato that has been over chilled and just tastes acid reminds me of my last girlfriend. She was a little tart as well.