It is one of life’s nagging mysteries: Why is a sandwich you order at a restaurant so invariably and intensely better than a sandwich you make at home?

Is there some immense secret realm of sandwich-master knowledge that mere mortals have no access to? Why do you find yourself in the kitchen, pressed for time, bereft of inspiration, staring slack-jawed into the refrigerator and succumbing to yet another bland slapped-together calorie blast of cold turkey and mealy tomatoes on supermarket white? With every bite, you taste only regret.

To remedy that, we fanned out across New York City, where plenty of chefs (and butchers and bakers) are applying their deep-tissue understanding of flavor, texture and technique to the task of converting every sandwich into a midday marvel. Fair warning: Making a better sandwich means avoiding the shortcuts. “People see a sandwich as so casual, so last minute,” said Gil Calderon, the chef and general manager of Meat Hook Sandwich and a man who gets swept up in very serious discussions of “textural play” and “temperature contrast.” “The best sandwiches are the ones that have a little more time devoted to them.”

Here’s what else the experts advised: