When dietary restrictions meet creative ingenuity, you come across great new food, and these two elements intersect here with these pickle sandwiches. An old pickle recipe with some newfound thinking is the basis of this expanding restaurant franchise.
The recently rebranded shop Peace Love Pickles is still riding the pickle wave. Since the business opened in 2019, it hasn’t died down, in fact, its customer demand has only increased further with three new locations. You have to wonder, why is the pickle the star of the shop? It definitely was a family affair for the creator Katherine Cohen Jordan. Just after the owner’s mother recovered from cancer her mother again faced another diagnosis — diabetes. Cohen Jordan didn’t want to deprive her mother of the classic old-school delicatessen food she loved, so Cohen Jordan began thinking of how to make deli sandwiches diabetic-friendly. A diagnosis of type two diabetes meant that her mother had to drastically reduce her carb intake. The solution? No bread, but a pile of sliced cheese and meat wasn’t very handheld nor user-friendly, the next best option came from unsuspecting condiment – the pickle.
Pickles got an upgrade to a bigger, starring role. A full-sized pickle became the sliced bread, it was the bookend to all of the delicious low-carb fillings, and thus the pickle sandwich came to fruition.
Cohen Jordan ran with the idea enough to open up a sandwich shop, her first store, Elsie’s Pickles, serving great sandwiches, just all on pickles. Ordering a sandwich here is no problem, these pickles allowed people with dietary restrictions to enjoy eating. You may think it’s as easy as slapping open a pickle from a jar, but it’s a little more complicated.
To start, these pickles are bigger than your average supermarket find. Their size is nostalgic, they are kind of the gigantic ones you’d find swimming in an early 20th-century Bowery barrel or in a glass jar in an old honky tonk next to hard-boiled eggs and peanuts. Okay maybe not the best image, but you don’t come across these gigantic pickles that easily anymore!
Peace Love Pickles doesn’t buy their pickles, they make pickles specific for their sandwiches with a special recipe. Actually, this recipe is from Cohen Jordan’s family, and it has some of the classic ingredients you’d expect — vinegar, mustard, onions…and some other elements — but that’s all she cares to divulge. After the brining process, the pickles are sliced, and the inner mushy seeded part is scooped out with an ice cream scooper. Carving out the fleshly innards is super crucial. The inner seed-filled center isn’t just unpleasant to eat, but it’s also super wet, doesn’t sound tasty right? Better yet, when you scoop out the seeds, you have more room for meat and cheese.
The expansion of Peace Love Pickles into a national franchise shows that the pickle sandwich is not just a fad. People want to embrace traditional fare with a healthier, modified approach. Nowadays, pickles are a fun mainstay substitute for carbs in appetizers like pickle chips or bacon-wrapped pickle spears. These pickle sandwiches fit into the healthy option of not-so-healthy classics.
If you can’t get to New Jersey to try this sandwich out, you can remake your own pickle sandwich at home. The hardest thing is finding whole unsliced pickles, but once you do, it’s super easy to make, just fill it with your favorite meats, condiments, and cheeses. A tip for a great pickle sandwich is to keep all of the ingredients cold, that way you get a great snap from the pickle.