A few blocks from where I went to school in Ottawa there was a small family-run sandwich shop that served up everything you could want in slices of bread. After exhausting the deli meat portion of the menu, I became obsessed with the place’s chicken parm sandwich.

Of course, you can’t keep a decent person down very long so after I moved back to Vancouver (sorry Ottawa, I really did love you, as a friend), I was confused as to why there was a lack of spots in which to grab a tomato sauce-laced chicken sandwich that wasn’t Subway.

Apparently, the folks at Burdy—many of whom hail from Ontario—felt the same. Burdy has been open for just over a week, slinging chicken and eggplant parm sandwiches from a food truck parked outside the vastly underrated Container Brewing.


Its take on the chicken parm features tomato sauce, house-made basil (or spicy) mayo, parmesan and mozzarella cheese on a toasted bun. And it’s delicious. Sure, some memories—e.g. trudging through the snow to get to class—aren’t really worth getting nostalgic over. But it did make me glad that there was at least someone in the city fighting for the chicken parm.

And while the sandwich is the star of the show, it has to be said that Burdy’s Italian fries are absolutely mouth-watering.

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It’s not exactly the cheapest sando in the world (the sandwich is $12.50, and fries are an extra $3.50), but washing it all down with some Container beer is more than worth the price. Now I really have no reason at all to go back to Ottawa. So sorry to the friends I made there.