Posted by Sheryl Kirby in news and media, rag round-up on July 17, 2008 at 4:45 pm

NOW's got a fancy new blog-style layout this week (and it's nice - cleaner, less cluttered and easier to read), and Steven Davey's exhaustive sandwich round-up is full of fancy blog-style photos. Davey hits all the sandwich hot spots from Vietnamese bahn mi to the smoked meat goodness at Caplansky's.

But the man doesn't stop at just types of sandwiches and has another piece on some of the best overall places to grab a sandwich and soup. I'll put up a fight over Salvador Darling, however, because I don't think they deserve to be on any kind of "best of" list. The last few times I've been there they've been missing ingredients (I ended up eating the pear poulet with mango because they were out of pears; the time before that, they were out of chicken) and service has been confused and really scattered. The mise en place was non-existent and the guy making my sandwich made a separate trip to the fridge for every single ingredient. Then he tried to talk me out of the accompanying salad (which was just a handful of organic greens from the plastic Price Chopper box) but refused to offer me a discount. They're lucky they've got the fancy Montreal smoked meat, otherwise savvy Parkdale sandwich cravers would just head across the street to Rustic Cosmo where the prices are the same, the options are better, and their mise is done and ready to go.

Also at NOW, Graham Duncan tries some Old Speckled Hen, and cynical commenters have wasted no time in taking advantage of the new blog format to be disagreeable.

At Eye, the Junction neighbourhood gets a raw deal (okay, actually 3 out of 5 stars) with new raw food restaurant Rawlicious as reviewed by Edward Keenan.

Over in Metro, Barb Holland has tips for using all those herbs that are getting bushy in everyone's herb gardens, and Krystina Castella reviews a book of tasty ice pops, including a recipe for blueberry cheesecake pops. There's also a recipe for fried rice, and Billy Munelly defends Pinot Grigio.