Just before 10 a.m. on a recent Wednesday, the line had already started to form outside 50 Two Sandwiches & More on Antares Drive in Ottawa. After the shop's doors opened, nearly a dozen people were inside placing orders. For roughly half of them, the answer to the question 'What would you like today?' was 'a candied club.'
The Candied Club Phenomenon
The candied club sandwich accounts for approximately 60 percent of all sandwiches sold at 50 Two Sandwiches & More. On an average day, the shop sells about 500 sandwiches, with 300 of them being candied clubs. Co-owner Terra Sirotich and her team have easily made more than 200,000 candied clubs in the last three years, since the sandwich became the shop's top seller.
The shop offers more than two dozen sandwich varieties, featuring cold cuts or chicken breast. However, the candied club has become so dominant that the shop sells T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase: 'Home of the candied club.'
What Makes the Candied Club Special
The sandwich consists of sliced chicken breast (grilled or breaded), candied bacon, cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, red onions, and jalapeño lime aioli. Customers can choose from three types of bread that are cold-fermented in the shop's fridge for up to five days before being baked in-house: white, Italian herb, and jalapeño cheese bread. Cold-fermented bread is known for its tangier flavor, airier crumb, superior crust, and easier digestibility.
During a visit, sandwich connoisseur Michael Podgorski shared his pro tips for optimizing the candied club: he adds pickles for acidity and asks for the aioli on the side as a dip. Regarding the choice between grilled or breaded chicken, he said, 'It's like choosing between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. It's a different experience.' Breaded chicken is more popular, though Sirotich prefers grilled chicken sandwiches in general.
The Origin Story
The candied club has been on Sirotich's menu since day one, when her shop opened during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Before that, she and her husband Marc ran food service at an Ottawa car dealership and previously operated a sandwich shop called Casa Dei Panini in the same location. One key difference at 50 Two Sandwiches is the house-baked bread, which the couple started making at home during the pandemic. 'You know you're bored. It's COVID. So we started doing that, and then every day, the kids would be, 'That bread's so good. Make us another sandwich,'' Sirotich recalled.
Sirotich is nonchalant about the candied club's origin. 'We just came up with that while we were bored, actually. We were just playing around,' she said. Despite its humble beginnings, the sandwich has overtaken sales so much that during peak hours, there is a separate line for orders exclusively for candied clubs. To reduce wait times, Sirotich stopped serving pizza and converted the pizza station into a dedicated candied club station.
