Sandwiches
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49 free Sandwiches trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
50 free Sandwiches trivia questions with answers. Sandwiches are the most eaten meal on earth that almost nobody thinks about, and that makes them a goldmine for trivia. This quiz starts with the 18th-century card-playing earl whose name stuck, the Passover wrap that beat him by 1,800 years, and the courts that have had to rule on whether a taco counts. Then it works through the American regional classics: the poker-game Reuben, the cheesesteak that grew out of a hot dog stand, the po' boy born in a streetcar strike, the muffuletta, the Cuban and the French dip. The second half goes global and gets weirder: bánh mì, croque madame, smørrebrød, the tramezzino a poet renamed, doner in West Berlin, gyros, falafel, Vegemite, the chivito, and Elvis's 8,000-calorie loaf. Sliced bread, Subway's $1,000 start, and Katz's Delicatessen round it out. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and primary sources before publishing, and each question carries its citation. Difficulty runs from lunch-counter easy to a handful only a food historian will get, so it works for a trivia night, a classroom, or settling an argument about what a hoagie is called in Boston.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the famous 1770s anecdote, Lord Sandwich ate beef between slices of toast rather than leave what?
The gambling table
The gambling table is where a French visitor's 1770 book put him, playing for 24 hours on nothing but beef between toast. His biographer thinks it likelier he simply ate at his desk while working.
Q 02Which McDonald's sandwich won its menu spot in 1962 by outselling Ray Kroc's meatless pineapple 'Hula Burger'?
Filet-O-Fish
Filet-O-Fish was a Cincinnati franchisee's fix for Catholic customers who skipped burgers on Fridays. In Kroc's one-day sales test it sold 350 and won hands down.
Q 03Honoring the 4th Earl of Sandwich, Captain James Cook named which islands the 'Sandwich Islands' in 1778?
Hawaii
Hawaii got the name because the earl headed the Royal Navy as First Lord of the Admiralty, the office that sent Cook's ships into the Pacific.
Q 04The sage Hillel the Elder is said to have wrapped Paschal lamb and bitter herbs in what?
Soft matzah
Soft matzah made Hillel's wrap, and the Passover Seder still re-enacts it: in the korech step, diners eat bitter herbs between pieces of matzah in memory of his custom.
Q 05In 2024 an Indiana judge ruled that which foods are 'Mexican-style sandwiches'?
Tacos and burritos
Tacos and burritos counted because the plaza was limited to made-to-order sandwich shops, so the ruling cleared a Famous Taco restaurant to open.
Q 06Paddington Bear keeps which kind of sandwich under his hat in case of emergencies?
Marmalade
Marmalade sandwiches went royal in 2022: in a Platinum Jubilee sketch, the Queen showed Paddington the one she kept in her handbag for emergencies.
Q 07A classic club sandwich stacks turkey, lettuce and tomato with which other meat?
Bacon
Bacon was missing from the earliest known description, in an 1889 New York paper: a Union Club sandwich of turkey or chicken and ham between two slices of toasted graham bread.
Q 08One origin story credits the Reuben to a Nebraska grocer's weekly hotel poker game in which city?
Omaha
Omaha grocer Reuben Kulakofsky asked for corned beef and sauerkraut at the Blackstone Hotel's poker night. The hotel put it on its menu, and in 1956 it won a national sandwich contest.
Q 09Which cheese belongs on a classic Reuben?
Swiss
Swiss cheese melted over corned beef is why the deli icon isn't kosher: Jewish dietary law forbids eating meat and dairy together.
Q 10Pat and Harry Olivieri, credited with inventing the Philly cheesesteak, originally ran what kind of stand?
Hot dog
Hot dog sales paid the bills until the brothers fried beef and onions for their own meal in the early 1930s; a cab driver smelled it, asked to buy one, and told them to sell that instead.
Q 11Which topping became the signature of the sandwiches at Pat's King of Steaks?
Cheez Whiz
Cheez Whiz only reached shops in the early 1950s, some twenty years after Pat and Harry Olivieri's first steak sandwich, which had no cheese at all.
Q 12A popular story says the po' boy was named for free sandwiches given to 1929 strikers from which industry?
Streetcars
Streetcars: ex-conductors Bennie and Clovis Martin promised striking carmen free meals and recalled greeting each one with 'Here comes another poor boy.' One local historian doubts the tale.
Q 13A po' boy ordered 'dressed' comes with shredded lettuce, tomato, pickles and what?
Mayonnaise
Q 21Which company patented the sealed crustless sandwich in 1999 and launched Uncrustables the next year?
Smucker's
Smucker's bought the idea from two Midwestern dads who made crustless sandwiches for schools. Its patent on a household sandwich drew ridicule, and in 2005 a federal appeals court judged it too obvious to protect.
Q 22The towering Dagwood sandwich is named after a character from which comic strip?
Blondie
Blondie's husband, Dagwood Bumstead, has raided the fridge for teetering snacks since 1936, and 'Dagwood' now sits in dictionaries as a word for any many-layered sandwich.
Q 23One theory traces which saucy sandwich to the 'loose meat sandwiches' a cook sold in 1930s Sioux City, Iowa?
Sloppy joe
Mayonnaise completes the dressing. The bread was made to order too: in 1929 baker John Gendusa created a long, uniform loaf so several big sandwiches could be cut from each one.
Q 14The muffuletta is said to have been created in 1906 at Central Grocery on Decatur Street in which city?
New Orleans
New Orleans grocer Salvatore Lupo is said to have watched Sicilian farmers balance bread, meat, cheese and olive salad on their laps, then packed it all into one round loaf.
Q 15In the TV series The Bear, chef Carmy returns home to Chicago to run a family shop built around which sandwich?
Italian beef
Italian beef is a Chicago creation, not an import from Italy. In the usual telling, immigrant families slow-cooked cheap, tough cuts and sliced them very thin to feed a crowd.
Q 16Which meat is traditionally layered into a Tampa-style Cuban sandwich but left out of the Miami version?
Genoa salami
Genoa salami most likely came from the Italians who worked beside Cubans and Spaniards in Ybor City's cigar factories. Miami's mayor once scoffed that salami is for pizza.
Q 17When World War I cut off wheat, bakers in French-ruled Vietnam stretched their baguette dough with which cheap ingredient?
Rice flour
Rice flour made a wartime 'pain de riz' that was dropped once the war ended. The belief that it is what makes bánh mì airy is a myth, says cookbook author Andrea Nguyen.
Q 18What is France's grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich called when topped with a fried or poached egg?
Croque madame
Croque madame is the egg-topped twin of the croque monsieur, literally a 'crunch mister' from croquer, to crunch. The egg is often said to suggest a lady's hat.
Q 19The Monte Cristo took off after the Blue Bayou Restaurant at which theme park began serving it?
Disneyland
Disneyland didn't invent it: egg-dipped, fried cousins of France's croque monsieur sat in American cookbooks for decades before the Blue Bayou's menu made the Monte Cristo a park legend.
Q 20Which lunchbox staple's first known recipe dates from 1901, when its spread was still a tearoom delicacy?
PB&J
PB&J began posh: Julia Davis Chandler's 1901 recipe called for thin bread fingers with currant or crab-apple jelly. Cheaper peanut butter later turned it into a children's lunch.
Sloppy joe, in the account Heinz's test kitchen dug up, began in a Sioux City cafe with a cook named Joe. One food encyclopedia is blunter: there was probably never a Joe at all.
Q 24Philippe the Original and Cole's, rival claimants to the French dip, are both restaurants in which city?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles, not France, is the French dip's home. Philippe's says a cook dropped a roll into the roasting pan by accident; Cole's says a customer with sore gums asked for his bread softened.
Q 25Philadelphia's word 'hoagie' is linked to Italian-American workers at which World War I-era shipyard?
Hog Island
Hog Island's Italian shipbuilders were nicknamed 'hoggies', and the name is said to have passed to their big lunch rolls. Historians doubt it, since the word doesn't turn up in print until the 1930s.
Q 26What is the traditional New York City name for a submarine sandwich?
Hero
Hero has no settled origin; the best guess is that you had to be one to finish it. Its earliest sightings, in 1930s New York, include a list of armored-car guards' slang.
Q 27In which city might an old-timer order a sub by asking for a 'spukie'?
Boston
Boston's spukie is named for the spuccadella, a long Italian roll, and the word survives mostly in old neighborhoods like Dorchester and South Boston.
Q 28Which sandwich chain began in 1965 as a Bridgeport shop named Pete's, after the physicist who lent its teenage founder $1,000?
Subway
Subway's first shop lost money, so 17-year-old Fred DeLuca and lender Peter Buck opened a second one 'to create the image of success'. That one lost money too.
Q 29The Fool's Gold Loaf, which Elvis is said to have flown from Graceland to eat, came from which city?
Denver
Denver's Colorado Mine Company stuffed a whole loaf with peanut butter, jelly and a pound of bacon. As the legend goes, 22 of them met Elvis's jet one night in 1976, and he flew home without leaving the airport.
Q 30Britain's chip butty, hymned in a Sheffield United terrace anthem, is buttered bread filled with what?
French fries
French fries, or chips to the British, make the chip butty a fried-potato sandwich. Sheffield United fans belt out its praises to the tune of the love ballad 'Annie's Song'.