Local chef Ana Sortun talks cooking, crafting and eating the perfect sandwich

What's in your ideal sandwich? Is it all about the bread? Is it about the components — the best mix of ingredients to make the "perfect sandwich"?

Local chef and restaurateur Ana Sortun (the mastermind behind restaurants Oleana and Sarma, and the bakery Sofra) is on a quest to make what she calls "a really amazing grab and go sandwich."

"This is totally not my wheelhouse ... [but] I'm obsessed with a perfect sandwich," she said on Radio Boston recently. "There aren't very many."

"I think we are way too conservative on sandwiches, and I think there's an art to it," she said.

Sortun said that for her, you can't just do a sandwich with turkey, lettuce and tomato. It's like making a whole dish, and the components — at least 10, she said — have to all fit in with each other.

Thanksgiving leftovers in a sandwich are ideal, she said.

"You're putting the whole meal in the sandwich," she said. "That's what I'm talking about."

Sortun said her ideal sandwich doesn't need to be super big, but "the ratio of bread to fill should be ... [not] too much bread and it shouldn't be too much filling."

And like the Thanksgiving leftovers, regular leftovers can be great for a sandwich.

"I think they're great building blocks for masterpieces sometimes," she said.

Sortun recently opened her second location of Sofra in Allston.