The art of making a sandwich is lost on a lot of people. It’s not their fault. It’s just that sandwiches have become synonymous with a portable meal that can be done quickly and easily with a few ingredients. If you have bread, turkey, and mayo, you have a sandwich. And even then, you don’t really have to have the mayo for it to qualify as a sandwich using the barest-of-minimums requirements — but, c’mon, who are you monsters who like a dry sandwich?????
Good sandwiches require a little extra effort. Things like toasting the bread, adding some avocado, or using slightly fancy mustard can go a long way to raising that sandwich bar just a little. But a great sandwich requires you to truly go the extra mile. That can mean slow roasting your meat, making a sauce, pickling a topping days ahead of time, or buying, naming, giving last rites, and killing a lobster.
I mean, Tony, making a great sandwich is like climbing Everest — it’s all about elevation.
By that standard, there’s really no way for some sandwiches to achieve Everest level greatness. No matter what you do, they just can’t rise to that level. And that’s fine. If every sandwich were out-of-this-world great, then none of them would stand out. After all, you can only have excellence if mediocrity is present.
In what may be a highly controversial pedestal to stand on, I’d argue that cold sandwiches made with cold-cuts simply can not achieve the highest level of sandwich excellence.
Before you get too upset, I’m not saying they can’t be good. They can be good. Very, very, good in fact — especially if you use high-quality meats and cheeses. But at the end of the day, there’s nothing that gives it that extra oomph to make it spectacular.
Like this weeks’ sandwich. We’ve made it all the way to the East Coast state of New Jersey and their sandwich, the Italian Sub. A quick research trip down Google lane suggested there isn’t any one set standard for an Italian Sub, just that it has a combination of thinly sliced deli meats — usually including genoa salami and capicola — provolone, and some assorted toppings.
Typically, Nate and I like to tackle our weekly sandwiches ourselves. We buy all of the ingredients and do all the prep in our own kitchen. But this sandwich seemed like one that was going to be way better if we didn’t put the effort into it and instead bought it from someplace that knew what they were doing.
Yes, we could’ve looked at any Italian Sandwich from any Italian/New Jersey Deli, copied the ingredients, bought them, and made the sandwich on our own. But we’ve done two deli-meat-centric sandwiches from the list so far — Louisiana’s Muffuletta and Missouri’s Hot Salami — and the effort didn’t seem to be rewarded with greatness. So in what I pinky-swear was a mindful pivot and not merely a cop-out, we bought this week’s sandwich from Domingo’s Italian Deli.
First I have to tip my hat to Domingo’s. The sandwich was very good. The bread was chewy, the meat-to-bread ratio was spot on, and the Italian dressing was the perfect condiment. But at the end of the day, on the scale of sandwich excellence, the Italian sub is nothing to write home about.
Okay, okay, yes, I’m writing a newsletter about it, but that’s because I do that with ALL the weekly sandwiches. But it’s not a sandwich that sticks out in any particular way. It was a great lunch that I would have completely forgotten about already if I didn’t have to be writing this post right now.
To be clear, I don’t think the Italian Subs’ inability to rise to incredible sandwich heights is the fault of the sandwich or Domingo’s Deli. It just is what it is and what it is is very good, and that’s it.
That’s ok. You can just read the weekly content instead.