ir conditioning, cool and crisp. No street noise. Free, fast broadband Internet, available via Wi-Fi or
two desktop PCs.
Large two-, four-, and eight-person tables. Strong wooden chairs, and some deep comfortable overstuffed
chairs & sofas-- you won't see those weak wobbly plastic chairs in our place. Nobody hurrying you to
finish, or shooing you away from the table to make room for the next customers.
Electrical outlets, properly wired and grounded 3-pin type, for your laptop computers & cellphone rechargers.
The latest newspapers free-to-read-and-return. De-motivational posters, Escher art, free tourist maps, even art for sale. Free self-serve icewater. Clean, tasty food. A free-to-use conference room in our Laguna Shoppe. What's not to like?
♦ A word about quality food ♦
Why I'm Picky about the Food You Eat
friend of mine ate at Subway the other day. Afterwards, he asked me why the sandwiches at Subway don't taste as good as the ones in the Sandwich Shoppe. I started telling him about super processed food – not just Subway, mind you. Many food shops around the world have succumbed to mass-market pressure, selling things that aren't as they seem. He was surprised to hear that the "ham" in the ham sandwich he just ate wasn't really ham. He was also surprised to learn that the "cheese" in that same sandwich can't be called "cheese" in many parts of the world.
If your ham is square, it ain't ham
The "ham" that you get at Subway - in fact, any "ham" that's in a neat square slice - isn't ham in the traditional sense. It's more like a hot dog. Manufacturers chop up pork parts, form them in a square mould, bind with fillers, then press, heat, and cool the slab, at which point it congeals.
As you probably know, hot dogs can contain just about anything but the squeal - hooves, snouts, organs, tongues and the like. That's also true of ham in Thailand.
In the US there are very strict laws about how the manufacturer must label "ham" products that aren't really ham. "Sectioned and Formed Ham" is probably the most common term: http://www.fsis.usda.gov/factsheets/ham/index.asp . The official terminology for a Sectioned and Formed Ham is "a boneless ham that is made from different cuts, tumbled or massaged and reassembled into a casing or mold and fully cooked." Fillers can include ground pork or ham byproducts, water, gelatin, flavorings, and various chemicals. That's the law in the U.S.
In Thailand, there are no terminology restrictions that I know about. Basically, anything that comes from a pig and looks like a slice can be called "ham." In many parts of the world, processed pork must, by law, be called "Processed Pork" or "Squared Ham" or something else to distinguish it from real ham, or even Sectioned and Formed Ham. Not so in Thailand. That's why you'll find that Paris Ham, Country Ham, BBQ Ham, Ham Roll, and Sandwich Ham are all basically the same except for flavorings.
It's worth noting that all of these hams are 100% hygienic: the hams - even the kinda-"hams" in Thailand - are clean, processed, fully cooked, meticulously inspected, and ready to eat. There's nothing wrong with them. They just don't taste like ham. Next time you see a suspicious piece of square meat, try eating the "ham" alone, without the accoutrement. You'll discover a vaguely pork-like taste, with distinctly artificial flavorings.
About seven years ago, I was at a food exhibition in Bangkok, and I was absolutely bowled over to discover a pork farm in Northeastern Thailand that was producing real Virginia Ham. (I guess "real" means different things to different people – some folks would say that "real" Virginia Ham comes from hogs raised within 20 miles of Smithfield, Virginia. I'm a little more liberal.) An American guy set up the production, and he did a great job.
 This is Virginia Ham.
These folks in Isaan knew their hams, and they were turning out extraordinary, lean, fully aged, de-boned Virginia Hams, every day. I started buying their hams immediately. Their Virginia Ham became the center ingredient in our first commercial Sandwich Shoppe sandwich. Virginia Ham and cheddar is still our best-selling sandwich.
Which brings me to my second bit of sandwich insight…
Real cheese comes from cows
In many countries, you can't call a yellow slice of goo "cheese" unless it started life inside a cow. Not so in Thailand.
 This is real cheese.
As you probably know, cheese starts as milk – possibly whole milk, maybe cream, sometimes low fat, but it's always straight from a cow. Or a goat. Or a yak. Whatever.
The milk is poured into a vat, and a bacteria culture is added. The bacteria change the milk to cheese. Skipping over a few magical steps, you end up with blocks of cheese. The type of cheese, the flavor, the distinct feel, are all a product of the bacteria and the way it's handled. Some countries allow a small amount of food coloring (thus, yellow cheddar); others do not.
So what's not cheese? In the US, the fake cheese is called "Pasteurized Processed Cheese Food," and it contains food grade oil, milk solids (read: powdered milk), chemicals, binders and flavoring. The raw materials are placed in a huge machine that heats and presses the goop, and turns out a brick or a sheet. Frequently, the sheets are cut into four-inch-square pieces, interleaved with plastic, time and date stamped, then stacked in blocks so they look like real cheese with plastic in the middle.
 Some "cheese" comes with an instruction book: "Open Here".
Thailand's cheese industry is just starting. I know of one cheese producer, southeast of Bangkok, who makes excellent Ricotta and pretty good mozzarella. The big-name cheese producers in Thailand are getting better: there's a decent feta being made in Bangkok now. Unfortunately, none of those are sandwich cheeses.
At the Sandwich Shoppes, we sell two kinds of cheese for sandwiches: a middling-sharp genuine cheddar, and a full-bodied Emmenthaler (commonly called "Swiss cheese" in the US and UK). We also sell Philadelphia Cream Cheese ™, primarily for bagels, and we use Philly for some cake icings. They're all imported, and they're expensive. But they're also very good.
Want to know if the cheese you're eating at another shop comes from a cow? Here's one way to test. Ask for a slice of cheddar, and a slice of some other kind of cheese. Put them side-by-side. Do they look about the same? Now taste them. If you're eating pressure-treated oil and powdered milk solids, you'll find that the only difference in taste comes from different flavorings.
It sounds corny, but I really care about the food we serve at the Sandwich Shoppes. As time allows, I'll talk about the approach we take, controlling every part of every item in the shops, using old-fashioned hand-crafted techniques ("home made" is the buzzword) to make the best food we can. Not because it's faster. Not because it has a higher profit margin, or a longer shelf life or easier distribution. But because going back to basics just tastes better.
♦ The Sandwich Shoppe Saga ♦
 t started with cheesecake.
Add moved to Phuket in September, 2000, to become the manager of the first Starbucks in Phuket. Woody moved to Phuket in December, with his son and two all-American dogs.
Woody would jog on Patong beach every morning, stopping by Starbucks on the way. Add remembered him as "Grande Low-Fat Latte" and played with the dogs. Back then, Starbucks Phuket had tremendous coffee (just as good as in the States), and absolutely inedible food.
Fast forward a few months, and Add offered to bake Woody a cheesecake. Woody expected a typical Thai white sheetcake with shortening on top. The result? An epiphany: A genuine to-die-for New York style baked cheesecake. Woody begged Add to start a bakery, just to get food into Starbucks. It took more than a year, but Add finally left Starbucks.
Khun Woody's Bakery's first big order came when the Starbucks Operations Manager in Bangkok called Woody with a panic request. "Our sandwich supplier in Phuket says he won't deliver to us tomorrow. Can you help?" Soon, Khun Woody's Bakery was supplying all of the food to Starbucks in Phuket, and helped Starbucks grow from one to eight shops. Starbucks is still the Bakery's biggest customer.
In the early years, Add and Woody worked out of their home kitchen, up at 5:00 every morning. Then came the employees (many of whom still work for the Bakery) and all the accoutrement of a modern bakery. The "factory" now occupies a four-story building in north Patong.
In October 2004, Add and Woody launched a retail bakery in a quiet, relatively obscure corner of Patong, a few blocks away from the beach. The shop served great coffee, cake, cookies and other goodies, but soon became known for its gourmet sandwiches. The Sandwich Shoppe, as it became known, rapidly outgrew its small location, moved across the street, and became a magnet for foreigners living in Patong.
In 2007, Sandwich Shoppe #2 opened near the entrance to the Laguna resort area, and Sandwich Shoppe #3 appeared in Chalong's Fisherman's Way Park. In 2010, a smaller Sandwich Shoppe opened inside Villa Market Chalong. Plans for shop #5 are under way.
Add and Woody (finally!) got married on August 26, 2007. July 10, 2010 they celebrated the birth of the first child of their marriage, a healthy boy named Andy.
Say "hello" to my little friend: Andy Leonhard, 3.6kg, born July 10th, 2010.
♦ Easter Eggs?! ♦
Hidden Treasure in KhunWoody.com
s you navigate around KhunWoody.com, you'll notice dozens of unexpected and humorous links, animations, cartoons, impossible items on our food and drink menus, and so on. Some of them are always visible. Some require simple patience-- wait and see. Others only appear when your mouse passes over them. All these are known in the IT and communications industry as "Easter Eggs", because they're hidden treasure.
It's nice to know that people in a supposedly high-stress intellectual environment like computer software and the Internet still retain their sense of fun.
A surprisingly high percentage of software has Easter Eggs. Google.com, for example: You can find Easter Eggs there that make Google's search engine talk like a pirate, talk like Elmer Fudd, and talk like The Swedish Chef from The Muppet show. Google Earth has a hidden flight simulator. Many computer games include a "boss key", which is a trick screen that looks like a business-oriented spreadsheet, so you can hide your game when the Boss walks by. Firefox web browser has lots to say about robots. Picasa has an Easter Egg that covers your screen with randomly placed teddy bears. Many of the movie DVDs you own, including all Pixar movie DVDs, have Easter Eggs. One of Woody's favorite Easter Eggs is the unexpected animation in an online shopping catalog from the Netherlands. To enjoy it, click here and just sit back and wait.
KhunWoody.com has a whole warehouse more Easter Eggs than most software. We've hidden more than a hundred Easter Eggs throughout the site, just for fun. Can you and your kids find them all?
For more computer news, follow Woody's computer advice columns in the
Phuket Gazette - Phuket daily news, events, jobs, classifieds, yellow pages, TV
Phuket Gazette: Phuket's English-language newspaper, with daily news,
events, classifieds, advice for expat residents, and comprehensive business directory - hotels, resorts, restaurants, golf, diving, property....
|
 |
THE CAFÉS 
Contact Us 
