Living abroad inspired me to recreate and put a fun twist on an absolute fave cafe-style open-faced chicken sandwich. It was one of the best decisions I’ve made and I now have this for lunch at least once a week.

Open-faced chicken sandwich with pickled onions

Making the Chicken for the Sandwich

The chicken is definitely the star of this open-faced chicken sandwich, and as a bonus this sauce recipe is so versatile! I add it to pretty much every sandwich now too – think grilled cheese, burgers, salad sandwiches.

If you’re feeling really prepared, you can poach a chicken breast to shred and use on these sandwiches. But I’ve also shredded rotisserie chickens or just bought the pre-shredded mix in stores, and they work just as well. So you can do any of the above to get your shredded chicken! Then you will want to make your sauce in a medium sized bowl, so you can just add the chicken to it.

Ingredients for open face chicken sandwich

Honey, mustard, mayonnaise mixture added to chicken

Prepping the Ingredients

Don’t let this title fool you, there is very minimal prep needed for this sandwich, especially if you go for the store bought shredded chicken option. There are only two things you’ll need to prep, the avocado and pickled onions.

Firstly, the smashed avocado. Season this a little bit with garlic salt, pepper and a squeeze of lime juice, to your tastes. That’s the prep done already! See, it’s easy.

Second is the pickled onions. I like to make a quick pickled onion, you can get my recipe for that here. It takes about 5 minutes to prepare and if you’re like me and forget to do it the night before, you can quickly whip them up in the morning and they’ll be ready for lunch!

Assembling The Chicken Sandwich

You could really assemble it anyway you want. But this is ideal for limited mess and the toppings won’t slide off while you’re eating it either.

Spread on your smashed avocado.
Add your shredded iceberg lettuce*.
Top with your shredded chicken, feel free to heap this on!
Add as many or as little pickled onions as you like.

*I’m not normally a massive iceberg lettuce fan, but honestly it is perfect for this sandwich! As iceberg lettuce is so light and bursting with freshness, it doesn’t overpower or take away from any of the other delicious flavours we have going on. You can use any lettuce you have on hand, but I do recommend trying it with iceberg lettuce at least once!

Storing Leftover Ingredients

If you have some chicken leftover, you can simply add some cling wrap on top and store it in the fridge for 2-3 days. I often like to make a larger amount so I can whip this sandwich up even quicker the next day.

Open-faced chicken sandwiches on parchment paper

With any leftover avocado, you should put it in a small dish, add lemon or lime juice, then cover in cling wrap. This limits the browning overnight. I push the cling wrap right down on top of the avocado so that there is as little air as possible. You should really only do this for one day but at a push can be used after two days.