Jamie Tiampo/Top Round Roast Beef

Roast beef sandwich

We're well-served by tacos, burgers, and ramen in L.A. But when it comes to a classic roast beef sandwich, our main source is probably Arby's. Which says a lot. This could all change come Monday, June 17, when Top Round Roast Beef opens at the corner of La Brea and Olympic.

The roast beef featured is a USDA Choice top round cut (hence the name), slow-roasted for 12 hours and thinly sliced-to-order, then presented in a toasted bun.

"We wanted it to taste like something you would have eaten as a kid growing up -- nothing processed and artificial. The basis for the rub is salt, pepper, and carraway. You know, the roast beef you'd have at your grandmother's table," says chef Anthony Carron (800 Degrees, Michael Mina), one in the team of four behind the new restaurant.

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Capriotti's Sandwich Shop

The Bobbie sandwich at Capriotti's

We may be roughly five and a half months away from Thanksgiving, but for some a turkey platter with all the fixings is good anytime. For them, we bring a deal they can use.

Thursday, June 13, Capriotti's will be offering their "Bobbie" sandwich -- roasted turkey with stuffing, cranberry sauce, and mayonnaise -- for $1 from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at all locations in California.

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Garrett Snyder

Sandwiches at Roma Italian Deli

On May 28, the FDA will lift the USDA ban on imported Italian cured pork products. This means we'll finally get to enjoy artisanal salami from parts of Italy like Emilia-Romagna and Piedmonte. Although according to The New York Times, it remains to be seen how much will be made available to us, given the cost of certification (upwards of $100,000).

Still the sentiment seems to be that we'll be saved from bad meat. While we wait to see how this will affect Italian delis, restaurants and purveyors in the long run, we're standing by some of our favorites for made-to-order Italian American cold cut sandwiches. Turn the page for our 6 favorites, listed in alphabetical order.

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R. Narins

Grilled Cheese Invitational 2013

Check out Anne Fishbein's slideshow of the 2013 GSI.

This post, originally published at 7:27 a.m., has been updated to include the winners.

The 11th annual Grilled Cheese Invitational, held this past Saturday, had something for everyone. It's almost impossible to express the level of silliness and the abject joy of people gorging on sandwiches at a seamlessly executed event, but we'll try -- and also recap what you missed, and maybe inspire you to attend (again) next year.

This year, the spectacle was held at L.A. Center Studios, on a bright and sunny day with the city skyline as a backdrop. More than 5,500 people showed up -- many in costume -- to enjoy the incredible assortment of grilled cheese-themed food trucks (Who knew there were SO many?) and free samples including Krugerman Pickles, Cabot cheese and Jarritos soda, and to try their hand at the Breville do-it-yourself panini station.

The affable Mayor of Cheese, Montano Sokolow, greeted attendees and, for the first time in the event's history, Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine performed to a large, very appreciative crowd.

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Facebook/The Melt

Egg-white-in-a-hole ( pepper jack cheese and jalapeño on sourdough at The Melt

President Obama declared April "Budget Responsibly" Month yesterday. April also happens to be Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month. Unbeknownst to San Francisco-based The Melt (with a location downtown), their grilled cheese sandwich giveaway will cover both bases -- looking out for both your wallet and your plate.

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N. Galuten

pastrami sandwich

The pastrami sandwich at Langer's Delicatessen is legendary. So delicious that it made our "100 Favorite Dishes" list. So distinctive that Nora Ephron deemed it "the finest hot pastrami sandwich in the world." So beloved that Angelenos regularly queue up for a taste -- and out-of-towners bemoan their loss.

But there is a solution for those hapless souls: FedEx.

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via FB

Turkey and Avocado at Sandwich Island

When I was growing up, there was a little mom-and-pop supermarket in my town called Rainbow Market (over Thanksgiving I learned it had been recently replaced by a Wal-Mart, so it goes). As the main grocery in a small suburban town, it was the hub of most food shopping, and before any dedicated sandwiches shops opened, the spot to pick-up a cold-cut sandwich was at Rainbow's deli counter in back.

Looking back, I'm sure there was almost nothing remarkable about them: A standard hoagie roll, a stack of dark brown roast beef or pink ham, shredded iceberg, styrofoam-textured tomatoes, a few floppy pickle chips and a smear of mustard and mayo. Nevertheless, I adored those things. On field trip days, while other kids would beg their parents for Lunchables, I would pry for a sandwich -- and the one's at Rainbow were cheap enough that my mother would usually relent.

These days, even while living amongst the country's most wondrous sea of banh mi, tortas, and gua bao -- all of which can be had at scandalous bargain -- that deep, intrinsic craving for a dirt cheap, no-frills hoagie returns every so often.

Whether you're cash-strapped, or just like to eat as if you were, there's no need to settle for the soggy cardboard at the local fast food joint -- instead try these tasty substitute subs, which might remind you of the simpler times when the cold-cut was was king.

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Elina Shatkin

Lamb Dip at Philippe the Original

Celebrating this year's Best of L.A. issue -- now out in print and online -- we're counting down, in no particular order, 100 of our favorite dishes.

21: Lamb Dip at Philippe the Original.

There are preferences in Los Angeles that speak volumes about a person: Dodgers or Angels? Lakers or Clippers? Fritz Coleman or Dallas Raines? But the one that predates all of them is the classic Philippe's-Cole's debate, a rivalry that has evolved from claims of creating the first-ever French dip sandwich into two highly respectable civic landmarks.

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G. Snyder

Sandwiches at Roma Italian Deli

Celebrating this year's Best of L.A. issue -- now out in print and online -- we're counting down, in no particular order, 100 of our favorite dishes.

35: "Sandwich" at Roma Italian Deli:

If locating the best golden Sicilian olive oil, some buttery Prosciutto di Parma, or rounds of garlic-flecked mortadella as wide as bowling balls is of paramount importance, you will at some point end up at Pasadena's Roma Italian Deli a store where owner Rosario Mazzeo has held court for decades, seated behind a deli slicer handing out little samples of sheep's milk cheese or pork guanciale.

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A. Scattergood

Sycamore Kitchen's Double BLT-A sandwich

Leading up to this year's Best of L.A. issue (due out Oct. 4), we'll be counting down, in no particular order, 100 of our favorite dishes.

53: The Sycamore Kitchen's Double BLT-A Sandwich.

Quinn and Karen Hatfield's newish casual place on La Brea, The Sycamore Kitchen, is an exercise in incommensurateness, albeit a very L.A. one. It is a breakfast and lunch place with valet parking. The outdoor patio has an almost picnic-table feel to it, yet there you are on busy La Brea Ave., hardly the most pastoral place in town. You order at the counter and take a number, yet the plate that arrives at your table may be filled with pastries that wouldn't be out of place at the most sedate of Parisian pâtisseries, or a constructed salad that could be equally at home at Hatfield's, the couple's fine dining palace on Melrose -- where the chefs in the open kitchen actually wear toques.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that the sandwiches at The Sycamore Kitchen are, well, more than ordinary sandwiches. The BLT is a creation that most of us take for granted on a lunch menu; like an order of omelet-and-hash-browns at a diner, it's there because it should be, a reminder that, despite a turbulent world, the ordinary machinery still works.

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