There was a time in Budapest when sandwich options were easy, and very home-grown: There were the open-faced canopies served at few select büfés, or the meleg szendvics (which appetizingly translates as "warm sandwich"), an increasingly endangered species usually made of meat paste and cheese and a half a toasted baguette. These days, however, the sandwich market in Hungary has grown to the point that a number of foreign companies have arrived in the country offering triple-decker clubs and other such shrink-wrapped things at locations ranging from corner grocery stores to motorway gasoline stations. Perhaps because the sandwich is truly a food for people on the go, two different mass-producing sandwich companies from abroad that have recently been spotted on the prowl in Budapest are named after predatory, quick-moving animals. But what would the gory result be if one pitted a "robo-sandwich" from the Czech-owned Crocodille Company against that of the lesser-known Slovak upstart Leopardee? Let's just find out.

The Crocodille sandwich, which I believe the Czechs make here in Hungary, looks pretty attractive for pre-packaged shelf food. Sort of like what you would expect as an in-flight snack on an image-conscious airline. In each package, you get not one sandwich but two halves of different sandwiches. I tried the BLT/ham and cheese, at Ft 490 (€1.93). The bad news first: The "bacon" tasted weirdly like cold corned beef, and the white bread on the ham side was soggy. But on the whole, the combined taste of the BLT was pretty good, especially on the whole grain bread. The ham and cheese was fairly standard, if not disappointing, with a few slim slices of ham and Hungarian cheese, topped with mayonnaise instead of mustard.

The Leopardee offering is another beast altogether. I am not sure what deranged Dr. Moreau-like mind up in Košice/Kassa concocted this mishap (the wrapper strongly indicates that, unlike Crocodille, the company actually trucks in its sandwiches from Slovakia); call it an evil genius of sandwich-making, minus the genius part. For starters, do Mexicans really love or use baguettes enough to ever justify creating something called a "Spicy Mexican Baguette" (Ft 350)? The meat (ham) came in slivers and, in keeping with local rip-off tradition, hung tantalizingly out from the side of the bread as bait, leading one to believe the roll was so packed with meat it could hardly be contained (those few pieces were the only meat in the sandwich). The filling was primarily red cabbage, tomatoes, paprika, and lots of mayo. About the only thing positive I can say about this sandwich is that its hot paprika packs a bite. The result was strange, and for lack of a better word, icky.

In this cage match of encroaching foreign fast-food predators, the Czech crocodile is the clear winner, thrashing its Slovak opponent so hard that the laws of natural selection would suggest eventual extinction for the latter. But even the Crocodille could benefit from additional competition, perhaps from some local company with the drive and energy to someday make it to the top of the local sandwich food chain. If only evolution didn't take so damn long.