This seems easy and common enough but I’m the only one I know who serves these sandwiches in these two ways. I travel in the wrong circles. This serves two.

Ingredients for both:

4 or 5 strips of bacon

2 cups of cubed chicken you’ve torn from that rotisserie chicken hanging out in the fridge. Don’t use the skin. If your carving goes awry, you don’t need all of the chicken to be in chunks but it mostly should be.

3 tbsp. mayonnaise, a little more or less depending on tolerance for mayonnaise. For this you can really use any brand, even, in a pinch, the dreaded Miracle Whip™. Oh it’s a miracle alright. You might even use lo-cal but I never have.

A little mustard. Maybe 1 tsp.

A little lemon juice

1 stalk of crisp celery

Some romaine lettuce

1 medium-to-large tomato (optional)

4 hearty rolls, not too large. I use rye that are smaller than bagels but larger than dinner rolls.

OR

6 slices of bread.

THE OPEN-FACE SANDWICH WAY

Mix the mayo, mustard, and lemon juice in a small bowl and put aside. Fry the bacon, then crumble it. Dice the celery.

Add chicken, celery, and bacon to a bowl and add the mayo mix. Combine well, cover, and put this in the fridge for a while so that it chills. I cover it because if you don’t you can get the smallest beginnings of a crust and the flavors, such as they are, don’t come together as much as they could.

Slice the tomato. I normally leave out tomato, and I really shouldn’t, it’s a good source of vitamin C. Get 8 thin slices and put them on a paper towel to dry out. The filling is liquid-y enough as is. Slice the 4 rolls in half. On each of the 8 halves, rip out a piece of romaine to more or less cover, top with a tomato slice, and spoon on the chicken mixture.

THE DEPARTMENT STORE “CAFÉ” CLUB SANDWICH VERSION

Leave the bacon alone. Make the mayo mix, add to the chicken and celery to a bowl, add and combine the mayo mix, cover, and chill. Chill yourself and have a nice glass of Chardonnay because you have exhausted yourself dealing with that snippy cosmetics counter employee who tried to sell you on “Jungle Red” nail polish (this is a reference to “The Women”, the original.) After your second glass, fry the bacon but don’t crumble it, put it on a paper towel to dry. Toast 6 slices of bread. I try to use a decent white, but you could use whole grain. Slice the tomato so you get four slices. Take two slices of bread, add a leaf of romaine, 1 tomato slice, and 1/4 of the chicken mixture pulled from the fridge. Now, snap a bacon strip in half and put that on. Top with another slice of bread and repeat. Top with the remaining bread so you have two triple-decker club sandwiches. Slice each sandwich into quarters diagonally and insert a toothpick in each half to hold it together. Serve with fruit salad.