Penny Barend co-owned a butcher shop in Cleveland called Saucisson for the better part of a decade. When you butcher whole hogs for a living, you stop thinking about pork sandwiches as sandwiches. You think about them as the final destination for the third of the pig that nobody else knows what to do with.
She beat Bobby in 2020 with one. The cut almost certainly was not loin. Loin is what you give to people who are scared of pork. Shoulder is what you give to people who like it. Cooked low, pulled, dressed with something sharp enough to cut the fat — that is the sandwich a butcher makes, and that is the sandwich Bobby was up against.
Barend left Saucisson in 2022 and is now the Destination Restaurant Chef at Tia Carmen in Phoenix. Bobby has restaurants in Las Vegas. She is closer to one of his now than she was then.