I love Subway sandwiches, I love everything about them, I love their poofy bread pillows they keep in those steam cages behind the register, I love that their lunch meat smells like my high school bio class when we dissected fetal pigs, I will never willingly step foot inside of a Quizno’s even though there is no earthly reason to prefer one over the other, because they both produce objectively bad sandwiches. I care no whits; I am fanatically loyal to Subway and would happily order a stack of their glossy white cheese triangles as a meal in itself. I LOVE SUBWAY AND I DON’T HAVE TO UNDERSTAND WHY. We live in a world of uncertainty, but Subway has mastered consistency, and I apply it regularly to my face as I would a balm or a salve.
Here’s what’s good at Subway:
- CRUNCH RIBBONS
- WET MEAT FLAPS
- WHITE TRIANGLES
- “THAT SUBWAY SMELL”
- BANANA PEPPERS
- SAUCE BUCKET
- BREAD DIMPLES
- SLICING
- VACUUM SEALED AVOCADO PASTE
- YOU WANT A SANDWICH PIZZA? WE’LL DUMP A SANDWICH ON TOP OF A FLATBREAD AND PUT IT IN THE OVEN, IT’S PIZZA NOW
- SHRIMP TUB
- TOASTED IS A FLAVOR
- FAKE BRICK WALLS
- SHINY CHEESE MOONS
- SAUCE GRAVEYARD
- BREAD SOFT LIKE COTTON BALLS
- CHICKEN PUCK?
- IT’S GOOD
- SOMETIMES THEY’LL REACH FOR A CUCUMBER AND A SLICE FALLS IN THE TOMATO BUCKET AND THEY LOOK AT YOU LIKE “I WON’T SAY ANYTHING IF YOU DON’T SAY ANYTHING” AND YOU JUST LEAVE IT ALONE
Tags: food, things mallory does for no reason
“WET MEAT FLAPS” sounds like a Primus album.
There is no meat quite so delicious as the delightfully spongy “oven-roasted chicken breast”
It is important to specify the “oven”, because Quiznos roasts their chickens over the fires of hell.
I should print this post out and keep it in my wallet as a diet aid. Whenever I feel like eating, I’ll just look at this instead and zap my appetite away.
As a preadolescent, I couldn’t wait to be 15 or 16 so I could get my first/dream job as a Subway sandwich artist. It never happened, but surely this is merely a dream deferred, not denied.
My husband’s first job was at Subway, in Tuscon. He had to take the float and bail his manager out of jail once.
I worked at Subway as a teenager but never had to bail anyone out of jail. Missed opportunities! When I was there we had cotton uniform polo shirts which made my later Taco Bell uniform made out of pure polyester especially disappointing.
still do have cotton polos, at least at my subway! not a big fan of the visors they make us wear, though. :/
as a Tucsonan I am here to say I have never felt at more than usual risk of harm in a Tucson Subway
Me too! Except then I went to work at Subway as a 19 year old and let me tell you, it was not how I imagined. I worked there ten hours a week around university, and when I quit they made me do four weeks notice.
LETTUCE AVALANCHE
I decline lettuce and once the lady making my sandwich seemed so confused and upset that I let her put it on anyway.
one time I tried to say I didn’t want vegetables (it was a chicken pizziola!.. that isn’t an excuse but still) the sandwich artist got so confused and upset that their manager came over and asked what was wrong.
“She doesn’t want any vegetables”
“…okay. She IS allowed to do that”
The last time I ate at a Subway, I was 19, recently reconverted to vegetarianism, and in the middle of Iowa in January. Leaving the only “club” open in my high school pal’s college town, we were drungry, and Subway was the only option.
I think I got like… bread dimples with crunch ribbons and white triangles. Maybe some tomato. It tasted toasted. I was toasted. It was good. I have not been back.
3.5/5 stars.
Side note, “That Subway Smell” is the same whether you are in Tokyo or Iowa. They pump it out onto the streets just the same.
Even in Paris! There was one down the street from the building where I took classes when I studied abroad there. About 5 months in we gave up our vow not to eat American food and went there. We also took a few field trips to the newly opened Chipotle. I’d do it again.
There’s a Subway nearby in the Netherlands where I live but I’ve never been to it, because I actually really don’t like Subway. But if they opened a goddamn Chipotle I’d be there weekly.
While on my honeymoon in Norway, my husband enthusiastically commented on how good it smells to walk by a bakery; Oslo is great, etc etc. Dude, it was a Subway. He was chagrined.
I was just going to come down and talk about the scent. Walking around New Zealand ‘cities’ I could smell it coming from a mile away. As are a result, I now associate Subway with an unrequited love who later became a dick and various towns in NZ.
It’s a weird combo.
Can confirm it is the same in Aus as well.
It was a siren call when I first moved from the states to Melbourne. McDonald’s smelled too good, not enough preservatives. Subway, though. I know that smell.
It’s definitely the preservatives. As Kat mentioned down the comments, it has a unique smell of ‘lab bread’.
As far as I can tell, Subway might be the only fast food chain that’s the same worldwide (or at least in the three countries I’ve visited it in). Every other chain makes some modifications for local preferences, but Subway apparently just wants you to be able to order the exact same aggressively mediocre sandwich everywhere.
If it means they have to truck in the Subway smell, then by god, they’ll truck in the Subway smell.
Not necessarily true! Living in Iceland, the first time my host family took me to subway, I asked for a meatball sub. They didn’t know what that was. I was flabbergasted, and to some extent, confused and upset.
Oh, man, I would’ve been confused and upset too. Because seriously, the only reason I ever set food in a Subway outside the US is because I knew I wasn’t going to have any surprises, which is more than I could say for McDonalds or Pizza Hut.
The smell is also still amazing in Afghanistan. Of course, I’m not sure if that counts since it is Subway on American bases rather than Subway in local Afghan community (Pizza Hut in Afghanistan on the other hand has something on the pizzas that no longer can quite be described as cheese).
Pizza Hut in China tries to have cheese, but even if I hadn’t known going in that cheese is not really a Thing in China I still would have been able to figure it out from the pizza itself.
Oh my god, totally, completely, 100 percent. Thank you for putting into words what I never could.
I worked at a Quizno’s in high school, clearly we need to rumble.
i, too, worked at quizno’s. i had a double chicken, mushrooms, pickles, white cheeses & mayo on white, a bag of harvest cheddar sun chips, and a large mt. dew every… single… shift for the entire duration of my employment. the location has since closed because the owner never paid his taxes or franchise fees, eventually skipping town with the his girlfriend & his boat.
I worked at a Subway for 4 years… 10 years later, and I swear, that That Subway Smell™ still permeates some of my wardrobe.
The Smell is why I don’t dine in if I can help it, because if I stay, I have to wash my clothes on my return home.
(although it’s still better than McD’s, which makes me want to throw up every time I go past one)
I worked at a Subway for three months. By the time I left, only the manager had more time there than me. This is the same manager who showed up to the store after a robbery and, when I showed for my shift 3 hours later, the dude what had been robbed was still there (while the manager and DM made a “party sub”) and told me that I was the only one who had asked after his welfare. This is the same manager who looked confused when I asked after washing the vetetables it was my job to cut up. And the same manager who _killed a fly on the meat prep_, picked it off, and calmly continued placing cold cuts on the piece of paper that makes it prepped meat.
I still don’t know what that smell is. I will walk BLOCKS to avoid it.
Cookies out of the freezer though? MAGIC. And if you get a particularly disgruntled Subway employee at the right bar rush time, you can get away with nearly anything, including making your own sandwich. *looks innocent*
Those cookies!!!
I could very easily be wrong, but I feel like Subway was one of the first mainstream places to have macadamia nut cookies, and they were magical when I was a kid.
It’s been 12 years for me since working at Starbucks, and a certain black polo shirt is still coffee-infused.
This is not a complaint.
I haven’t worked at subway for, like, 14 years? but the smell still clings more than it should when I set foot in the place. Which I do from time to time because I can always eat those sandwiches even when everything else on earth sounds unappetizing.
I am now facebook friends with one of my managers from that era. She’s cool.
I worked at the Subway restaurant in NYC for 2 years, and oh my god… I am still dreaming about the smell of the food once in a while.
I bought a sandwich at Quizno’s once. It tasted like a Subway sandwich only the line structure was confusing and I accidentally stole some chips. Subway, on the other hand, has cookies that taste like 90% processed joy. We know who wins here.
My favorite part of working there used to be buying myself cookies, but instead of taking the baked ones, snacking on frozen cookie dough instead. (Sadly, no stores I’ve asked since will just sell me their frozen cookie lumps.)
I am laughing, but I am also very concerned.
Also, it wasn’t until recently that I learned that all three meats in the Subway cold cut combo are made from turkey. Turkey ham, turkey salami, turkey bologna. I cannot fathom what the difference actually is between these, or why you would bother disguising turkey as a parade of other meat flavors.
TURKEY HAM.
The conversion of corn to turkey is more efficient than the conversion of corn to pig. This is probably a lot more important to Subway’s math than the people who don’t eat pig because a.) G-d, b.) cholesterols c.) pigs being delightful animals that people feel bad about eating.
THERE’S NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANY OF THE SUBWAY MEATS. Sorry for yelling, but I used to pay for the roastbeef (Here, in Chile, is one of the ONLY FOUR options for the “””premium””” sub), then I realised is basically the same flavor always, even if it just ham. Or at least it is when I put the amount of sweet onion sauce and sweet mustard I do.
Off topic, but hello Chilean friend! Can you suggest podcasts or radio shows where people speak Chilean Spanish for a long time? My spouse is Chilean, and I have language processing problems, so when we see his family I can’t understand anything. I’m hoping more time listening to people speaking will help me recognize individual words.
Back on topic: does Subway have to modify their bread to sell it in Chile? The polyfill bread we get here might spark a riot in the second most bread-conscious nation in the world.
Hi! as an inhabitant of this small, beautiful and very flawed country, I always get super excited when someone acknowledges my nationality and even more in this case, considering you want to embark on the difficult but rewarding journey that is to understand Chilean Spanish. So, my recommendations: to get used to the accent, http://radio.uchile.cl/programas is a university radio with programs similar to NPR I guess? it’s a little bit too formal, but if you can understand that, then you can move on to experience the true murder of the spanish language, (slangs, fast talking, curse words, etc.) https://soundcloud.com/flimcast; they usually discuss movies and other pop culture topics, sometimes they say very funny things, sometimes very horrible things, but if you master that, I assure you will understand your spouse family. Good luck!!
Now, regarding the bread, judging by the spongy texture I’m sure that is just as filled with yoga mat as there was in the US, maybe that’s why subway is never the first fast food of choice for any of my friends, but then again the same could be said for the rest of the world. (Still I love you subway, I will continue to enjoy your sub of the day for 2 USD, dripping with sweet mustard sauce)
“just as filled with yoga mat”
A+ description.
Thank you for the podcasts! The accent is… challenging, and the spouse speaks some weird expat version of Chilean Spanish that is NO HELP understanding anyone else – he sounds like he went to engineering school in the 1970s and also steals a lot of vocabulary from Latin and French and Mexican Spanish.
I figure standard Subway bread might get a shop burned down in Chile. Y’all take bread seriously.
I have no real helpful advice for understanding the Chilean accent, but I do have a lot of sympathy. It definitely took me 3 months of living there before I could understand anyone under the age of 25–or understand anyone at all more than 30% of the time. And at that point I think I’d been studying Spanish in the US for 8 years? If you can find Chilean TV shows ( not sure how easy that will be as it sounds like you’re not living there) maybe start with something straightforward like the news and then move on to something like Casado con Hijos if you want to level up? I couldn’t understand that until I’d been in-country for practically a year though so good luck! But my advice is always to date a native speaker if you want to learn a language well, so you’re already on the right track 🙂
TESSELLATED white triangles, thank you very much.
I read this as tesseracted and got a little excited.
The “Subway Smell” = aggressive Pizza Lunchables
Serious question, as a veteran Sandwich Artist (TM): why did anyone ever order the “veggie patty”??? That bizarre hockey puck thing had to have been made out of the farts of soybeans. I never ate one in three years of sandwich artistry and never will.
I always got the veggie patty! With bacon on it. *That* confused the sandwich artists.
Is it good?
It was definitely the least-worst!
Eh, soybean farts aren’t that bad if you put enough Chipotle Southwest or Sweet Onion sauce on it.
I have actually always really enjoyed those patties, they have water chestnuts in them for a really good crunch! It was always an especially good option in the late 90s-early 00s, when hardly anywhere out had vegetarian food and if they did, it was just pile o’vegetables. At least the patties were more satisfying. Plus, lbr, almost anything toasted with melted cheese & chipotle sauce is going to taste good.
I once took the Greyhound from Vancouver to Ottawa, and I was SO EXCITED when we’d stop somewhere near a Subway. As a vegetarian, my diet for the majority of the five day trip was Tim Horton’s bagels, so Subway represented a chance to avoid scurvy. A+ Subway memories.
A+ Canadiana. Five day bus trip across mostly empty country, eating at mostly what once was a Canada-only franchise, will northern Ontario ever end or is this just the world now?
That was exactly it. Just so much northern Ontario.
Drove from Seattle to Kingston once, via Jasper and the Canadian Rockies. The northern Ontario endlessness is a surprise. You’d think that Manitoba or Saskatchewan would feel longer, but nope.
Why so there so much goddamn Ontario!??! I took the greyhound from Winnipeg to Montreal recently – Ontario is this strange time-warp dimension where you wake up and can’t tell if its been 6 minutes or 6 days!
I’ve done a long-distance several-months bicycle tour, and my then-boyfriend and I are both vegetarians.
Seeing a Subway along some rural road in asscrack of nowhere was MANNA FROM HEAVEN. It was cheap and filling and had vegetables.
Like, I literally have fond memories of several of them in particular: the one just off I-90 in Montana a day and change west of Missoula, or the one outside North Battleford, Saskatchewan…..
I love how Subway understands that its customers do not have the TIME for them to sprinkle on salt and pepper separately, and have therefore consolidated them into EFFICIENT FLAVOR DUST.
You know what is also great though, that they recognized that some people do not like pepper and thus they still keep shakers with only salt/only pepper in them! I love that I can avoid having pepper when I eat at Subway so easily.
Aha! And I don’t want the salt, so the pepper-only shaker is for me!
I never ate at Subway growing up for whatever reason, but about five or six years ago the band I was in did a two week tour and our singer insisted on eating at Subway at least once a day. After that experience I will never set foot in a Subway again even if I am literally starving to death. There is one a couple of blocks away from my apartment and whenever I walk past and smell that smell I shudder a little.
I am an amateur Subway scholar and regular customer. The ‘Subway Smell’ does seem to be consistent — I have smelled it in Stockholm, I have smelled it in Beijing, I have smelled it in my own home of West Oakland (the only Subway I’ve found with bulletproof glass between the Artistes and customers). I dig that Subway may be the only international brand whose name is translatable into every local language, but they never do — it’s just pronounced phonetically. I don’t know, that just tickles me. It’s not like you would ever confuse a Subway Sandwich shop for an actual Subway entrance. Eh, I’m sure there’s a good reason.
Also — if you are prone to buying footlong subs, know that — at least right now, in California, but probably everywhere — pretty much every receipt you get from Subway has a coupon good for a dollar off a footlong sub if purchased in the next four days. If you on that #sublife, a dollar off the price of a $7 sando adds up fast.
Final Subway fact: Jared has the grossest looking lips of any human alive that doesn’t have an STD flare-up. They bother me so much. SO FUCKING GROSS.
Totally calling Subway “Chikatetsu” when I’m in Tokyo and “The Tube” when I’m in London from now on.
I’m currently in Chile studying, and there is a subway around the corner from my apartment. Can confirm the subway smell has made it to South America.
This makes me wonder about something. I’ve only ever been to two Blimpie’s in my life, but they both smelled exactly the same. I can’t assume that there’s a signature “Blimpie’s smell” based on such a small sample though. Also, the smell was not so much food-based, but was more like the smell of large amounts of bleach diluted by huge amounts of non-potable water.
That subway (the one on Broadway and 14th? Or are there multiple subways with bulletproof glass in Oakland??) was alarming the first time I went in, especially since you can’t give your money to the cashier without somebody snaking their arm around glass.
The one at 7th and Mandela, near the West Oakland Bart, also has bulletproof glass and they have one of those little metal box deedly-bops that slides under the glass — you put your money in it, slide it over to the other side, they shove your food into it and slide it back to you. Kinda like the drive-through window of a bank.
Subway was my faaaavourite in high school and university, to the point where my friends and I had nicknames for the various Sandwich Artists. My favourite was Zoro, a man who truly took pride in his work and brandished a knife with gusto while tearing through loaves of Parmesan oregano. Also one time he gave us a url for the Amazon listing of his self-published book? Oh Subway, a.k.a. the semi-permanent smell of my first year dorm room.
I used to get it when I was a vegetarian on occasions when everyone else wanted to go to Subway. There are not a lot of veggie-friendly options–you can always go with “random raw vegetables on a roll” but it’s not very filling.
ETA: this was in response to Kate’s question about the veggie patty, damn you intensedebate
I accidentally destroyed Subway for a vegetarian friend by pointing out she was basically ordering a vegetable sandwich. 🙁
haha. *sad trumpet sound.*
I knew damn well I was just getting a salad on bread. That’s fine with me.
There’s still something inherently satisfying in filling your face with bread dimples and shiny cheese moons and crunch ribbons, even without the wet meat flaps. I definitely think it’s the cheese-product though.
When we were in high school/ the three years post high school, Subway employees always had the best workplace shenanigans. Like “I was supposed to close with Jackie but she started having sex on the sandwich counter so I had to close ALL BY MYSELF. She didn’t even wipe down the counter! Now she’s mad because I could tell her boyfriend that she hooked up with the counter dude.”
“Woe” by Campbell McGrath
Consider the human capacity for suffering,
Our insatiable appetite for woe.
I do not say this lightly
But the sandwiches at Subway
suck. Foaming lettuce,
mayo like rancid bear grease,
meat the color of a dead dog’s tongue.
Yet they are consumed
by the millions
and by the tens of millions.
So much for the food. The rest
I must pass over in silence.
Shorter more accurate list: nothing.
Subway smell tricked me the first time into thinking that those sandwiches were actually delicious, yet again subway is my go-to hangover meal (in the budget category) so you know the old sayin’, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice…
I CANNOT EXPRESS HOW PLEASED I AM THAT YOU MENTIONED THE FETAL PIG SMELL.
My locker was next to the bio lab where the fetal pigs were dissected every year for all four years of high school. IT IS NOT AN ODOR I WILL SOON FORGET.
I know meat eaters who swore by the veggie patty! (Like bibliophibian, apparently!) I can not speak to why.
When I moved back home to Philly from Chicago I realized with joy that I would never have to eat Subway as long as I live here, because Wawa is a thing that exists. All the sandwich-based predictability, but like 80% less despair! Also, touchscreens!
You know, I ate a lot of vegetable sandwiches in college, and they were all right (if they had enough cheese and Old Bay on them).
Do all Subways have Old Bay or just the ones in the Mid-Atlantic?
“Wet Meat Flaps” just gave me a full body shudder. That would be a contender in a three-hideous-words contest.
The sandwich artists always seem sad I don’t want MOAR THINGS on my sandwich. I am a disappointing sandwich muse.
sandwich muse
This is where I fully lost it and had to clap a hand over my mouth to hold back the laughter.
I got food poisoning the last time I ate at Subway. The dude bro in front of me ordered a sandwich on white with extra salami, extra onions and extra mayonnaise. I ordered turkey bacon on whole wheat (and added all the vegetables and mustard). The lady at the counter gave me dude bro’s sandwich. It was horrifying.
My friend and I were on our way to a roller derby tournament across the border. She suggested I eat the wrong sandwich to save time. I said no. So we went back for my sandwich. Which I happily ate as we headed south. It was tasty.
By the time we got to our destination, I didn’t feel right. I thought I was car sick. When we got to a grocery store, my friend would hold up something like a cupcake and say, “Isn’t this delicious-looking?” and my stomach would roil as if she had presented me with a squirrel carcass. By the time we got to the hotel, I had fever, chills and non-stop throwing up. I slept in the bathroom. Needless to say, I missed the tournament.
And my husband hit the road at 6 a.m. the next day to save me from having to spend the day in an arena. The border agents said he was the best husband ever. He’s pretty smug about it. I spent the next 3 days throwing up at home and not playing in the tournament. My team came in second. I haven’t eaten at Subway since.
I am the opposite. Subway has never done anything to me, other than be the restaurant my tennis coach made our team go to, and I hate it with the strength of a thousand suns. I think there is just something about being forced to eat at Subway that elicits a strong negative reaction, whereas choosing to do so generates a sort of affectionate relationship-by-necessity. In order to allow yourself to eat it, you have to create a system of belief whereby you don’t mind it (I hate to suggest that any of you guys have brainwashed yourself into enjoying something that is clearly disgusting but WAKE UP SHEEPLE) It’s possible I even ordered and ate food-like substances that I may have even found edible, but I hated having to pick out a type of wet meat to eat (do not disgust me by suggesting I might be happier with what passes for vegetables pressed into their bread, that which offers a false choice of five identical breads, all with that particular Smell). Every one of its foods is suspect. That Subway Smell is the bane of my existence; it assaults your senses if you pass within a hundred feet of a Subway. IT’S ALWAYS THE SAME EVERYWHERE. That’s just not right. That’s deep eldritch horror magic there. There is a Subway that is a mere couple blocks from my house that has shut down, and every time I see it I say, “HA. GOOD.”
I have been to Subway once in my life. Nothing about it made me feel the need to go back.
What’s your Subway poison, Toasties?
I like a Spicy Italian (god knows what that salami is made of to turn it that weird bruised grey colour) on Hearty Italian, extra cheese if I’m feeling wealthy, then peppers, lettuce, olives, jalapeños, and Southwest Sauce.
Haven’t been in a long time, but I used to get always get a footlong of tuna salad (yeah, tuna salad) with lettuce and onions.
YES footlong tuna with lettuce onions and banana peppers! And mustard. Delicious until you start to think about it too much.
I ate this every single Friday during Lent in high school.
i will probably be the only person to say this but: tuna. tuna on hearty italian (do they not make this anymore???) with lettuce and mayo an d cool ranch doritos (on the side, not in the sandwich. although in the sandwich would probably be good to).
<3 u, subway tuna salad
Well life has changed since I ventured into the “herbs and cheese” bread. So I get that, footlong, with roast beef, cheese, toasted yes of course, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, pickles, and always a little bit more zesty Italian sauce than they put on the first time
I get the subway melt thing? Bacon and ham and turkey on that “italian’ bread, plus add the ‘Southwest sauce’ (whatever that is, I just know it’s delicious).
The Subway artist is always disappointed in me! six inch honey oat, with “natural cheddar”, non toasted, with lettuce, tomato, cucumber, green peppers, spinach if they have it, onions, triple black olives, and banana peppers. Salt and pepper. No sauce. I hate sauce.
I have several that I like: tuna, subway club, steak and cheese feature most prominently. I have the sad that they no longer offer wraps.
Footlong on parmesan oregano or Italian herbs and cheese. White cheddar, spinach, extra pickles, extra onions, peppers, tomato, precisely 4 jalepenos, pepper, oregano, parmesan, with just a thin strip of chipotle sauce. I skip the chipotle and have no sauce if I order the tuna.
I can’t eat there anymore, but it was the cold cut combo on herbs and cheese bread, with white cheddar, lettuce, cucumbers, a little bit of chipotle sauce, and a little bit of ranch. This particular sandwich once made me so ill though, that I wouldn’t eat there anymore even if I didn’t have celiac disease. My stomach is roiling just remembering it
For a while I was living on roast beef with cheddar cheese, onions, olives, jalapeños, and mustard. (Okay, okay, you can add the lettuce, since ou seem to want to.) The bread type wasn’t important. It’s been years now. But this thread makes me crave one.
I am a simple girl with simple desires. Club (no ham, their ham always looks so… wet), extra cheese, extra mayo, mustard, and spinach. That’s it.
I will very occasionally get a Spicy Italian when I’m feeling adventurous but that much cured meat tends to give me heartburn.
Six inch meatball on the whole-wheat-ish bred with cheese and green peppers and sometimes lettuce and tomatoes. Not toasted.
BMT (Bigger Meatier Tastier) combined with Spicy Italian with pizza sauce and run through the garden on hearty Italian. Seafood with tomatoes and olive or Hot Tuna with bacon (microwaved, not toasted) was great too. I worked there for a couple years in the 90s and then in 02. I only miss the experimentation.
Spicy Italian, 6″, on herbs and cheese with pepper jack. Toasted. Lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, cukes, green pepper, and a tiny bit of chipotle southwest. Bottle of apple juice and usually no chips. (Sometimes Cool Ranch Doritos.)
My bestie’s is Spicy Italian, 6″, on wheat with provolone. Toasted. All veggies except onions and a lot of chipotle southwest. Large Diet Coke and a bag of Miss Vickie’s jalapeño chips.
That is how often we eat at Subway, sigh…
I was a Sandwich Artist in high school and I used to go into the walk-in cooler and just eat those glossy cheese triangles. Sometimes I would squirt a little of one of the sauces on it too, the sweet onion being by far my favorite. I also ate the same damn sandwich every day because I was the most boring of teens.
I am very much loving all the Subway ads that popped up on this post.
It followed me to the body odor article.
I am very much loving all the Subway ads that popped up on this post.
Haven't been in a long time, but I used to get always get a footlong of tuna salad (yeah, tuna salad) with lettuce and onions.
Those cookies!!!
I could very easily be wrong, but I feel like Subway was one of the first mainstream places to have macadamia nut cookies, and they were magical when I was a kid.
What is the smell? What is it? What is that smell? It’s like…lab bread. I don’t know! Someone tell me.
I handed in my CV to Subway as a teen, because I needed any job, but it was with a full body shudder. I eat subway sandwiches now but only when my partner goes to get them because he loves it. I can’t handle the smell or the ordering system. The sandwiches are ok. Super artificial for something so loaded with veggies.
ohh, “lab bread” is an excellent description, yes.
Subway is my go-to road trip food as it seems to be kinder to my constitution than fast food these days.
No discussion of Jimmy John’s? Is Jimmy John’s a fairly regional thing? (I love the Vito sandwich)
I have no great love for Jimmy John’s, but the feature of Jimmy John’s that keeps me coming back is that I can order online and it will be delivered to my house in TWELVE MINUTES.
People around here swooned when we got a Jimmy John’s and I think it’s pretty decent… but would it kill them to cut my sandwich in half without me asking for it? Every other sandwich place does it, so it can’t be that hard. And because every other sandwich place does it, I’m usually out the door with my sandwich when I remember that I have to ask.
I worked for JJ’s for several months, which was terrible, but I like the sandwiches. Country club, beach club, and bootlegger’s club, for me.
I love JJs because they’ll do a low-carb option (i.e. wrap it in a huge lettuce leaf), which Subway does not have. I used to eat Subway every day, but not any more.
The fetal pig smell comparison is making me feel like a huge creep. I dissected a fetal pig a few weeks ago and the instructor was telling us how queasy the preservative smell makes her feel, but all I could think was: why? It just smells like slightly more aggressive vinegar and vague meat.
…I may or may not ask my sandwich artist (TM) to top my 6″ spicy italian with “oil and vinegar – wait, no oil, just the vinegar”
I, too, have no strong aversion to the formaldehyde weirdo deli scent wafting from cadavers. My anatomy lab was so awkward as most students availed themselves of the masks offered and there I stood, wrist deep in the lungs of some 90 year old woman, mask free and curious. Feel no shame fellow non sensitive sniffer!
Unrelated (related?): do any of you sandwhich artists recall heavily judging specific orders? I confess that my Subway order is aggressively bland and I always feel like my fondness for the nontaste of a turkey sub with iceberg and mayo nets me some side eye…
When doing the fetal pig section of my high school physiology class I made the mistake of getting a Quizno’s carbonara sandwich for lunch that day and the smells were inextricably linked, which was not a good thing. Never ordered that particular sandwich again.
My mistake was cooking pulled pork the day prior. The actual pulled pork was delicious, but I had to make it with a replacement pork shoulder because the one I had defrosted didn’t smell right at all. The next day was the pig dissection, and I didn’t mind that smell one bit, but when I reheated the pulled pork leftovers all I could smell was the gamy off-smell of the meat I threw away. Weirdly, the smell of delicious saucy pulled pork < pickled fetal dissection pig.
🙁
I live in what is basically food paradise in Mexico but last year the fella and I went on this massive three-continent trip for two months, bookended on either side by a coast-to-coast roadtrip across the United States. We ate our faces off everywhere we went but when I think about What I Ate On My Autumn Vacation, it’s all the Subway we ate as we drove across the US and back again. He’d never been on a long road trip before and getting used to American food in all its extra-processed glory took some adjustment. At least once a day we’d split a Subway –I think usually the Italian Club with every vegetable imaginable– and have our little moment of “well, at least it’s technically recognizable as plant matter.” By the end of our two month journey, Subway had Stockholmed its way into our hearts.
this is momentous because i ate subway for the FIRST TIME EVER today.
it was perhaps the most mediocre sandwich i have ever eaten.
I don’t know about you, but for a long time my family had a Quizno’s boycott because they had those nightmare inducing commercials with those weird hamster things….
I shudder to this day.
I have a Quizno’s boycott from way back, because the only time I went in, their cheese options were mozzarella, swiss, and cheddar. WHAT? Provolone is the sub cheese. That is the cheese that goes on subs. If you want to sell auxiliary cheeses then fine, but what kind of bizzaro sub shop doesn’t have provolone and American cheese?? I’m still angry about it.
The creepy hamsters made me giggle tbh.
Ingredients available only in the secret Subway Golden Elite Club (located underneath select Subways, accessed by actual subway):
Siberian rhino
Ayahuasca sprouts
Oven-roasted shoggoth
Moon dust
Liquid pain
Morphean blue lotus
Philosophical mercury
Kraken egg
Soylent chipotle
Mobius bacon
God cheese
Fountain of Youth water
Alicorn shavings
Saucer alien pâté
That really good dark mustard
That is not toasted which can eternal lie
Someone once tweeted at Mallory that Subway’s bread tastes like a picture of bread, and I often think of that and laugh.
Sometimes I walk past a Subway and the smell is embarrassingly enticing, and other times it is sick-making.
I don’t know how I feel about Subway.
wait wait wait wait THE BRICK WALLS ARE FAKE?????
There are so many folks in this thread who came to Subway via Trying to Be a Vegetarian in the Midwest and I just want to hold all of you and share meaningful eye contact.
I love JJs because they'll do a low-carb option (i.e. wrap it in a huge lettuce leaf), which Subway does not have. I used to eat Subway every day, but not any more.
That is not toasted which can eternal lie
Pizza Hut in China tries to have cheese, but even if I hadn't known going in that cheese is not really a Thing in China I still would have been able to figure it out from the pizza itself.
Spicy Italian, 6", on herbs and cheese with pepper jack. Toasted. Lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, cukes, green pepper, and a tiny bit of chipotle southwest. Bottle of apple juice and usually no chips. (Sometimes Cool Ranch Doritos.)
My bestie's is Spicy Italian, 6", on wheat with provolone. Toasted. All veggies except onions and a lot of chipotle southwest. Large Diet Coke and a bag of Miss Vickie's jalapeño chips.
That is how often we eat at Subway, sigh…
Things about my lifelong relationship with Subway:
1.) As a teenager, I had a sweet gig window painting a local Subway shop. They paid me in cash and free sandwich coupons, which I would use to order Cold Cut Combos with extra meat and extra cheese. In many ways, those were the best days of my life.
2.) I was noticeably upset when they did away with the U-Cut.
3.) There’s nothing like the feeling of watching a sandwich artist completely butchering your sandwich assembly, yet not being able to complain about it to anyone. No one will support you if you express disappointment in your Subway sandwich, because they feel that it’s your own fault for going there in the first place. They just don’t understand.
4.) No one should ever pay more than $6 for a Subway sandwich. The whole point of a Subway sandwich is affordability. Affordability, pickles, and oil & vinegar. People tell me there are other sandwiches on the menu, sandwiches that aren’t the Cold Cut Combo, but I don’t believe them.
5.) I asked for “light mayo”, only to witness the sandwich artist zig zag stripes of what I would describe as “heavy mayo” across the lettuce. It was several visits before I noticed the bottle labelled “lite mayo.” It took a couple more visits after that for me to come up with the phrase “easy on the mayo.”
list read in this guy’s voice obviously https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NjTWvl8x-U