Stalking the perfect sandwich — Submarine Center
We were at a taste of San Francisco dinner party once and someone brought an Atomic sub from the Submarine Center. John took one bite and said “now THAT’S a sandwich”. Or something like that. I took a bite and said yeah, that’s like an east coast sub (to me).
Now I should add that one of our past times has been to search for the perfect sandwich. We’ve found the perfect reuben at Morty’s deli. Seriously, it was great. And the next time I feel up for the caloric splurge I’ll go back, take a picture, and write about it for you.
But today? Today is back to searching for the perfect sub. So off we went to the other side of town to Submarine Center in West Portal.
This place clearly has reached cult status. There’s a line out the door (on a Saturday post 1 p.m.). Still, we were able to order and grab a seat.
The nice thing about Submarine Center is they have 3 sizes in submarines: mini (your normal sandwich size, IMO), center, (the normal one for other people) and super. They also have regular sandwiches but this trip was all about the sub.
We order a regular size atomic (hot pastrami, roast turkey breast, corned beef brisket, cheese and hot peppers) and a mini Italiano (mortadella, capicola, salami, & provolone). Each sandwich comes with lettuce, tomatoes, onions and special sauce.
Atomic on the left, Italiano on the right
The good: the lettuce is shredded as you’d hope in a sub. The “special sauce” is the right italian-ish vinaigrette. The proportions are right on. The mini sandwich was perfect size.
The not as good: In our case, the bread was overly toasted. In my case I don’t actually like the bread toasted at all but I didn’t realize that was the default. My bad. Still, both are sandwiches were toasted a little bit too long. The quality of the meats was OK. I would have been better off with a roast beef or turkey. I think I’ve been too spoiled by incredible salami that I should get in a sub what rightfully should go in a sub.
Would I come back here? Sure, but I wouldn’t seek it out. Would John? Yeah, probably. But we’d both opt for our sandwiches not to be toasted.
