Chicken club sandwich with bacon & swiss cheese

This everyday club sandwich replaces turkey with chicken, along with crisp, thin-cut bacon, fresh tomatoes, lettuce, and swiss cheese between three pieces of buttery toast.

My biggest piece of advice is to keep the ingredients thin (especially the bread slices), so that you can still take an actual bite out of this double-decker sandwich.

The secret to a better club sandwich

I have three simple tricks to make a really good club sandwich at home:

• Use thin-cut ingredients: bread, chicken, and bacon.
• Layer ingredients in a way that creates structure: sandwich slippery ingredients between ones with texture (see How to make & layer a club sandwich for more details).
• Use mayo and lettuce to stop a juicy tomato from soaking into the bread.

Here are my ingredient recommendations at a glance before we jump into each one. If you don't need the detail, skip on down to the recipe card.

Ingredient	Notes
Bread	Pepperidge Farm thin-sliced loaves (half the thickness of regular bread)
Bacon	Oscar Mayer Naturally Hardwood Smoked (cooks up thin & crispy)
Chicken	Chicken breast cooked any way (baked, grilled, or even rotisserie)
Tomato	Fresh beefsteak for flavor and meaty texture (less watery)
Lettuce	Choose your favorite. Iceberg & romaine are classics.
Mayo	Choose your favorite, or make a flavored aioli.
Cheese	Swiss and provolone add a nice balance without taking center stage. Havarti is a good creamy option.

Recommended ingredients and why they matter

Normally I'd tell you to use your favorite brands, but in this case I actually have some specific recommendations to get that diner-style sandwich at home.

I've tested a lot of types of ingredients and brands throughout the years and have settled on some solid options.

If you're interested in the specifics of how all of these work together, keep on reading. Otherwise, skip to the recipe.

Thin-sliced sandwich bread, toasted

You can make your club sandwich on any type of bread from a classic white bread to sourdough or whole wheat. The biggest catch is to make sure it's sliced thin so the sandwich doesn't get too tall to eat.

The classic diner-style club uses a white pullman loaf. Pullman bread is square-shaped without the muffin-top shape. It's baked in a bread pan with a cover to keep that shape.

The square slices make a club sandwich that cuts into perfect little triangles.

I like using Pepperidge Farm Thin-Sliced bread because the slices are about half the thickness of a regular loaf. They even have a sourdough version. It's not a perfect pullman loaf, but close enough in my book.

If you want a decadent, restaurant-worthy club sandwich, brush melted butter or bacon fat onto the bread before toasting it on a tray in the oven. It turns a perfect golden brown and is even more flavorful.

Thin-cut bacon, cooked crisp

Bacon strips on a club sandwich need to break cleanly when bitten or the whole slice will pull out of the sandwich and bring other ingredients with it!

Thin sliced bacon is easier to cook up crisp enough that it easily breaks apart.

However, if you really like the thick, chewy bacon, chop it up and then add it to the sandwich.

I buy thick cut bacon from a local farm almost exclusively, but I reach for Oscar Mayer bacon for a club sandwich. It feels silly every time I do it when I'm spoiled with such good farm bacon, but it works better every time. (This is not a paid placement, promise).

Chicken breast meat, cooked any way & sliced thin

Chicken makes a great club sandwich because it's easier to cook and is usually juicier than turkey (which is easy to dry out when cooking).

I also suggest using chicken breast rather than dark meat. Chicken breast is easier to get clean slices and is less greasy. This matters because the sandwich is already very large, so you don't want it to taste too rich or feel weighed down.

However, any type of chicken breast makes a great club sandwich. Here are some comments from what I've tried in my own kitchen:

• Baked chicken breast: the cleanest, most classic flavor
• Grilled: adds a noticeable smokey flavor along with the bacon
• Rotisserie: probably the juiciest option
• Deli chicken breast: layer in waves instead of flat for a better texture

Whatever you choose, slice it thin, rather than putting a thick slab of chicken breast on the sandwich. A thick slab works for a grilled chicken sandwich on sturdy bread, but if you do that on a club sandwich, it will pull the other fillings off when you bite into it.

Fresh beefsteak tomatoes, salted

On a club sandwich, watery tomatoes can turn the bread soggy and easily slide around between layers.

First, choose a beefsteak tomato. They are known for their denser flesh that's less watery and less seedy. Beefsteak tomatoes are the large, often irregularly shaped ones you find at the grocery store or markets.

Next, you'll want to salt them, wait 5 minutes, and then pat dry. This helps remove a little extra water.

Then taste a part of one and if it's bland, sprinkle a little more salt on them when layering into the sandwich (for flavor).

If you can find specific varieties at the farmers market, or are growing any of your own, look for the following:

• Brandywine: a good, true tomato flavor with thick, dense flesh and small seed pockets. A single slice or two will cover an entire sandwich.
• Cherokee purple: a favored heirloom with a richer, almost smoky flavor. Has less seeds than standard grocery store slicers.
• Mortgage lifter: very dense flesh and not watery, making them a top sandwich choice

The rest of the ingredients are much more flexible

The specific types of lettuce, mayo, and cheese don't play as critical of a role in holding the sandwich together. You can really pick your favorite for the most part.

However, lettuce should be thoroughly dried, may shouldn't be applied too thick, and cheese should be sliced thin.

Here are my recommendations:

• Lettuce: romaine and iceberg are classics (but anything from arugula and kale to microgreens work great).
• Mayo: pick your favorite brand or make an aioli (see my recommendations below)
• Cheese: swiss and provolone add flavor without taking over, while harvarti and gouda are milder alternatives.

If you are looking for a mayo recommendation, try Hellmann's "extra heavy" mayo. It uses more yolks, giving it a richer flavor and creamier consistency.

There's a catch though. You can only buy it in bulk since it's meant for delis and restaurants. The smallest container I've found is a gallon, but it's actually a good price per ounce.

I found it on Amazon if you're interested (it's an affiliate link so I get a small commission if you buy something).

You can also try your hand at making your own mayonnaise. I found two for you to try:

• Foolproof homemade mayonnaise from Inspired Taste
• Two-minute mayonnaise from Serious Eats

How to layer a club sandwich

Think of a club sandwich as two open-faced sandwiches that are stacked on top of each other, then topped with a final piece of toast.

Here's why that particular order of ingredients matters for your club sandwich:

1. Mayo on toast: creates a barrier from watery ingredients
2. Lettuce: catches tomato juice
3. Tomato: sandwiched between two textured ingredients to prevent slippage
4. Bacon: texture latches on to tomato and chicken
5. Chicken: cut against the grain so it breaks clean on each bite
6. Cheese: can be slippery if layered with mayo, which is why it's last and why mayo isn't added to the underside of the next piece of bread.

Insert toothpicks before cutting it in half (or into quarters) to hold the sandwich together.

Recipe

Nutrition breakdown of calories, protein, and fat

Club sandwiches are very filling and high in protein. A whole sandwich has 53 grams of protein which is right around the bottom end of the recommended daily range for the average woman.

However, it's also high in fat and calories. It makes sense since the sandwich has mayo, bacon, and cheese (all high in saturated fat), and the double-decker stacking essentially turns two sandwiches into one.

If you're trying to cut down calories, you can make this a single stack club for about 470 calories. Or you could eat only half the sandwich for 435 calories. Note a single stack still has more calories because you still need 2 of the 3 pieces of bread.

Here's a calorie, protein, and fat breakdown by ingredient, so you can adjust to fit your nutrition goals.

Ingredient	Calories	Protein	Fat
1 slice of bread	70	3g	1.3g
½ tablespoon butter	50	-	5.5g
1 tablespoon mayo	95	-	10.5g
1 slice bacon	38	2.5g	4g
1 oz chicken breast	47	9g	1.5g
1 slice cheese	67	4.5g	5g

So as you can see, there's a lot of wiggle room to reduce the calories, it just won't be a rich, restaurant-style club anymore.

If you want to remove 200 calories and 20 grams of fat for a healthier club sandwich, while keeping most of the protein (47g) you could do the following:

• Toast without butter (-50 calories and 5.5g fat)
• Use 1.5 tablespoons of mayo instead of 2 tablespoons (-45 calories and 5.5g fat)
• Remove 1 slice of bacon (-38 calories and 4g fat)
• Remove 1 slice of cheese (-67 calories and 5g fat)

More recipes & resources

If you're looking for other restaurant style recipes to make at home, let me suggest a few of my go-to options: