The British-based, McDonald’s-funded Pret hired Fleming, an award-winning former pastry chef, to oversee its sandwich line. In the past two years Pret has opened 15 shops in New York and, hungry for a bigger piece of the restaurant industry’s prime “quick casual” market, is eying other East Coast cities. (Quick casual, which includes chains like Cosi, Panera Bread and Corner Bakery, is for office workers who want fast food, but not fast food; the segment is growing at three times the rate of the rest of the business.) Unlike its competitors, Pret prepares all its sandwiches before the noon rush, wraps them in cardboard and stacks them on shelves, giving customers the impression of being at the Automat. But the offerings are high end: avocado, Parmesan and arugula; egg florentine; Thai chicken. Pret and Fleming face a test, however: Brits may go for a premade sandwich, but what if Americans, whose motto is “have it your way,” do not? “Pret’s challenge is to educate the public that a prewrapped sandwich can be a very good sandwich,” says Dennis Lombardi of Technomic, a Chicago-based food consultancy.
Pret hired Fleming, 42, a star in the New York food scene, in August because she knows how good ingredients go together. But she’s not a natural lunch lady. She spent eight years on dessert, plating her pastries at New York’s renowned Gramercy Tavern. (Says executive chef and co-owner Tom Colicchio, “Coconut tapioca, panna cotta with grape jelly–there weren’t too many clunkers.”) For someone who had been baking tamarind-glazed mango napoleons, sandwiches may seem like a drop down the food chain. But not for Fleming. While the shift to Pret seems odd–there were no openings at Sara Lee?–she sees her job as fundamentally the same. Only now, she says, she’s got a larger audience. “At Gramercy, we changed the way people thought about dining,” says Fleming. “I feel strongly about the ability of Pret to change the way people think about eating quick meals.”
She’s been ready for her next course for a while. When she started at Gramercy, “every waking moment was spent thinking about desserts,” she says. “That stopped. I miss being obsessed.” So now she’s acting on another obsession. As a kid on Long Island, Saturdays were all about getting provisions for salami sandwiches. “I’m a freak about having crunchy things in my sandwich,” she says, so she’d layer them with coleslaw and potato chips. Pret doesn’t offer a salami, coleslaw and Pringles sandwich–not yet–but Fleming thinks the line should be spicier. Company research shows Americans like a “drier eat” than Brits. So why not hold the mayo? And add a spicy tomato relish, chutney or vinaigrette? Fleming shouldn’t meet resistance. Pret’s committed to innovative techniques: signs in stores ask people to suggest ingredients. Seriously. The phone number’s on the wall.
A former ballerina, Fleming knows the meaning of hard work. Says Melissa Clark, who coauthored a cookbook with Fleming: “We tested the peach tarte Tatin eight times, and the apple, 12. There were times when I said, ‘If I have to make this f–ing thing one more time…” (Fleming likes things done right, even in interviews. For this one, because of the noise of an exhaust fan, she held the recorder to her mouth the entire time.) If the perfect sandwich exists, Fleming will find it. When she does, she can live out another food fantasy. “I’ve always wanted to make sandwiches, and sell them like a cigarette girl at the Jitney stops going to the Hamptons,” she says. Better start hardboiling those eggs now.
