Sub-Saharan Africa

A quarter, half, or full loaf of white bread with the interior scooped out and filled with curry — bean curry, chicken curry, or mutton curry — the scooped-out bread used as a lid and for dipping into the sauce. The bunny chow was created by the Indian community in Durban, South Africa, in the 1940s as a way to deliver takeaway curry without disposable containers. It is now Durban's defining food, eaten across all racial and economic lines, with a set of prescribed etiquettes around how to eat it (from the corners in, using only the bread and no utensils).

A full-length French loaf, sliced lengthwise and filled with fried fish, masala chips (French fries cooked with Cape Malay spices), and optional additions including polony sausage, calamari, or chicken. The gatsby was created in Cape Town in the 1970s at a fish and chip shop in Athlone. It is enormous — typically over 60cm long — and is designed to be shared. Sliced into sections and wrapped in newspaper, the gatsby is the communal sandwich of Cape Town's Cape Malay community.

Chakalaka is a spicy South African vegetable relish of beans, carrots, peppers, onion, and chiles in a tomato base, usually served with bread or pap (maize porridge). In roll form, it is spread generously inside a white bread roll, sometimes with cheese or polony, creating an intensely flavored, economical sandwich. Chakalaka originated in the mines and townships of Johannesburg where workers needed cheap, nutritious food.

Akara are fried Yoruba fritters made from black-eyed pea batter seasoned with onion, scotch bonnet pepper, and crayfish. In sandwich form, they are stuffed into agege bread (a soft, dense Nigerian white loaf) or sliced open rolls, eaten for breakfast with ogi (porridge) or independently. The akara sandwich traveled with the African diaspora to Brazil as acarajé in Bahia and to Cuba as a part of Afro-Cuban cooking.

Suya is the defining street food of northern Nigeria and the wider West African Sahel: beef or chicken skewered and coated in a dry spice blend of ground peanuts, ginger, paprika, and various spices, then grilled over charcoal. In sandwich form, the meat is pulled from the skewers and wrapped in flatbread with sliced raw onion, tomato, and additional suya spice. The peanut-spice coating creates a unique flavor profile that is nutty, smoky, and intensely savory.

South Africa's grilled cheese sandwich: white bread filled with cheddar cheese, sliced tomato, and onion, sometimes with chutney (Mrs. Ball's Original Chutney is the canonical choice), wrapped in foil or placed directly on the grill grate over the coals of a braai (South African barbecue). The outside chars while the cheese melts and the tomato softens. The braaibroodjie is obligatory at any braai, eaten alongside the meat, and it is one of the simplest sandwiches on earth made unexpectedly great by the cooking method.