Recently, Australians have had to put up with some of their favorite dishes being altered. First, it was the fairy bread fiasco in October when an American food writer incorrectly insisted that Australians eat fairy bread toasted for breakfast. Now, the iconic sausage sandwich has gotten a makeover, and Aussies are not happy.
According to Mashable, sausage sandwiches are usually served at festivals, elections, and fundraisers, and they usually consist of white bread, barbecued sausage, caramelized onions, ketchup, barbecue sauce, and mustard. While I don't totally get Australia's apparent obsession with plain white bread, I do understand wanting to defend an iconic dish. And, that's just what many people did when, on Sunday, the Melbourne Flames Rowing Club posted a photo to social media of what they called a "deconstructed sausage sandwich."
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Soon after the photo was posted, the angry comments started flooding in. A news channel even picked up the story, which only caused more dramatic responses.
In order to get to the bottom of this whole controversy, Mashable spoke to Rachel Kadziela, a paddler for the Melbourne Flames, who was at the fundraiser where this sandwich nonsense went down. She claims, it was all meant to be a joke: "We were in a hipster suburb within Melbourne when we were cooking the Bunnings sausage sizzle and one of our fellow paddlers, Tim, came up with the idea to make the deconstructed sandwich. We're amused by people's reactions. They've clearly missed the joke — as if we would ever mess with the sacred tradition that is the Bunnings sausage sizzle!"
So, it looks like every single person in Australia is on the same page about this important dish. And, knowing full well that Aussies take their sausage sandwiches seriously, the team actually had a pretty clever way to raise awareness about their fundraiser.