[Something Delicious] Fig and Halloumi Sandwich at Torch Song Café

My current favorite downtown "treat lunch"

Torch Song Café, home to some very good lunch options in Downtown Victoria

Beyond home cooking, I’m also interested in writing a bit about eating out in Victoria. This is the first of what I think will be a recurring series, highlighting dishes that I think are especially delicious around town.

I try to bring my lunch to the office most days, and save eating out downtown as a once-a-week treat. Any more than that and I find that eating out for lunch becomes an expensive slog.

Recently, I’ve been returning to Torch Song Café on Government Street for the fig and halloumi sandwich, which has become my go-to “treat lunch.”

The sandwich itself is a real pleasure. It is served on a square slab of crusty bread, that combines the crunch of focaccia with the pull of ciabatta. This is spread with a simple fig jam. I suspect the jam is homemade, both because they pull it out of a labelled quart container and because it tastes just like the very simple fig jam that I make at home myself in the fall. From there, they griddle several generous fingers of halloumi in a cast iron pan, and nestle them into the jam. Then it’s a handful of peppery arugula, a scoop of roasted walnuts, and flaky salt.

The sandwich in question

It is easy to imagine similar ingredients summing up to a lesser sandwich. If the bread was not good on its own, if the halloumi was cold and squeaky, with a less assertive lettuce … it would be easy for this not to work. But instead, the sandwich is generously made and the whole thing comes together excellently. Every bite contains warm, salty cheese which melts into the jam. The arugula bites through everything. The walnuts are a crunchy delight.

I think a lot about the Jia Tolentino essay “Always Be Optimizing” — where she describes the uncanny experience of eating at the American fast-casual salad restaurant Sweetgreen:

The ritualization and neatness of [the ordering] process (and the fact that Sweetgreen is pretty good) obscure the intense, circular artifice that defines the type of life it’s meant to fit into. The ideal chopped-salad customer needs to eat his $12 salad in 10 minutes because he needs the extra time to keep functioning within the job that allows him to afford a regular $12 salad in the first place.

Part of the pleasure of the Fig and Halloumi sandwich is that it’s kind of an anti-Sweetgreen. That halloumi is grilled to order, so it takes a little while to get to you. And once it arrives, it’s not a neat lunch! The fig jam and oil drip out and on to your hands and whips of arugula go everywhere. It is a very sticky sandwich. You cannot scroll Instagram or respond to Slack messages while eating this.

Instead, you get to take a while look around the pleasant café, to watch the bustle of the open kitchen, and to listen to the excellent music that is always playing on vinyl. And of course you get to eat something delicious. That’s a real treat.