I was walking back to the Airbnb the other day, and I passed a storefront that was just three vending machines in a small space — two were pretty standard (drinks, chips, etc.), and the third had a variety of hot sandwiches like fried chicken, burgers, and the one I tried, kebab.
Two thoughts immediately crossed my mind:
- This can’t possibly be good.
- I need to try it.
I justified it by telling myself that I could write about it on this blog, but let’s face it — my morbid curiosity would have compelled me to try the vending machine sandwich regardless.
I selected what the machine called “Kebab de Vitela” (I wasn’t about to try the burger or the fried chicken sandwich. What do I look like, an idiot?); the machine counted down from 24. Something about it was vaguely threatening.
I was then invited to open a small door and retrieve a puffy, piping hot plastic bag containing my dinner.
It was a sad looking sandwich, but I held out hope that it would taste better than it looks.
Yeah, not so much.
The flavour of the meat was actually fine, surprisingly enough — certainly, it’s not anything that anyone would ever classify as “good,” but there wasn’t anything off about it. Considering that it’s a vending machine kebab sandwich, I’m going to call that a win.
It was the texture of the meat that made this as disgusting as you’d fear a hot vending machine sandwich would be. I’m not even entirely sure how to describe it, other to say that it fell into the horrifying no-man’s-land between crunchy and chewy.
The yogurt sauce that was so prominent in the picture was entirely absent. I probably dodged a bullet there. As for the bun, it was pretty microwavey, but basically fine.
All in all, not a great sandwich. And yet — if I come across another vending machine selling hot, incongruous food, I’ll probably try it.
There might be something wrong with me.