In a performance review, what's the right order of praise and criticism to give?

Well a lot of people love the feedback sandwich. You know where you stick the meat of criticism in between two slices of praise. But I have to say that's a bad idea because the feedback sandwich does not taste as good as it looks. My biggest problem with the feedback sandwich is that in our memories primacy effects and recency effect tend to dominate. We remember the things that happened at the beginning and at the end and whatever's in the middle often fades, which means people might forget the criticism altogether.