Are you a sub snob? I became one when I started eating sub sandwiches in the Delaware Valley, where the top purveyors get their yard-long rolls delivered from a nearby bakery just a few hours after they were baked and where the so-called Italian specials hold great salumi sheaves of Genoa salami, ham, provolone, and capicola, which is known in New Jersey as gabagool. Really, nothing compares with these magnificent creations.
Given that it is not possible for most of us to go to New Jersey when we want a sandwich, it’s only right to expand our sense of what a sub is. Consider a New Orleans po’boy and maybe even Chicago’s Italian beef. What a tubular sandwich is called is not merely a matter of different terms used to label the same thing. A Cuban, a banh mi, a zep, a torpedo, a wedge, a hoagie, and a grinder each has its own personality and, in most cases, specific regional identity.
