Yesterday, I stopped in at Subway to get a sandwich to take home and split with my wife who was so busy planning today’s family Easter feast, she didn’t feel like cooking the day before.
I ordered our usual and was told that I could no longer get dijon horseradish sauce. The kid said that if I wanted something spicy, I should try the new chipotle pepper sauce.
I pointed out that a pepper is a fruit,eaten as a vegetable, and that horseradish is a root. He stood there dumbfounded by the idea that “heat” from a root was different from “heat” from a fruit.
If I had known ahead of time that Subway thinks that peppers taste just like horseradish, I’d have gone to Arby’s.
This is a big deal because peppers cause my wife considerable gastric upset and horseradish does not.
As a biologist, I know that a horseradish is a vegetable and that a pepper is a fruit, but I didn’t know that the spicyness from the two aren’t comparable. To me, it’s no different than comparing the sweetness from honey to the sweetness of granulated sugar. If you run out of sugar to add to your tea, is it a crime to add honey instead? Is someone who offers you honey in place of sugar a dummy deserving of vitriol and humiliation?
Was the sandwich artist supposed to magically know that your wife has problems digesting peppers? It’s not like he snuck them into the sandwich or something. He just made a suggestion, probably very nicely.
Your sandwich artist has better things to do than worry about the technicalities of what makes a fruit a fruit. Most Subway employees are teenage kids who haven’t graduated from high school yet. I’m sure the head honcho of Subway knows what a horseradish is. An eleventh grader trying to save up for his first car should not be expected to.
It seems like the Pit has become a repository for snobby, nitpickish and bratty posts. I wish all of us–including myself–could grow up a little and try being a little more compassionate and forgetful when it comes to our fellow man’s foibles.
I like Subway. Back in the early days I thought about investing in them, when they were touting “2000 stores by 2000”. But I didn’t. Today they have over 23000 stores around the world. Oops.
They’re definitely the best and healthiest “fast-food” joint around, IMHO. Great chipotle sauce, too.
Here’s a recipe for the stuff, though I’ve no idea if it’s any good. If you give it a shot let me know how it turns out.
Oops – forgot the forum decorum. Let’s try that again, this time with feeling.
I very much like Subway’s chipolte pepper sauce – it’s better than jism from a cross-eyed bull, but none of the pribbling rump-born pignuts in my area will sell me a bottle of it to take home.
Anyone know how to make the stuff?
Oh, and before I forget, Zenith, I belch in your general direction.
I think you can buy it at Aussie Subways, they seem to sell most of the sauces I think. Or you could try the medal winning Smokin’ Mango Chilli Sauce from Byron Bay Chili Co. As they say:
A mango twang with a tomato backup, three kinds of chillies, jalapeno, cayenne, and chipotle (smoked jalapeno). This sauce will treat you to
a new level of bbq sophistication. For those who like it hot.
I am 2/3 of the way through a bottle in only a week or so.
This says that horseradish’s heat comes from isothiocyanate (or something vaguely like that… follow the link!) while, as I understand it, the heat in peppers comes from capsaicin. Two different chemicals, two different agonies. Makes sense.
No, no, no. Horseradish/wasabi spicyness is quite distinct from chili pepper spiciness, which is quite distinct from ginger spiciness. I don’t know or care if it has to do with the difference between fruit and vegetable, but they are very different types of hot. Sugar and honey is not a valid comparison…maybe more like sugar and cinnamon.
Horseradish does not produce a mouth-burning sensation like capsaicin does. Horseradish stings–it’s got an abrasive, acidic, tingling bite. Take a whiff of it and you’ll experience a sharp pain through your sinuses. Chiles don’t produce that sensation. If you swallow horseradish wrong, you’ll feel the buring in the back of your throat and in your lungs. You don’t get this same sensation from chiles. The horseradish sting is also short-lived and easy to wash down. Or ever have really strong radishes? They’re spicy in the same way as horseradish.
Same with ginger. Eat a raw slice of ginger, and it’ll produce a spicy sensation but, once again, one that is different from both chile peppers and horseradish. It’s more comparable to the bite of horseradish, but it’s also distinct.
I don’t believe I’m picking nits here. They are completely different flavor sensations.
Fine. They’re different types of spicyness. But it is logical to think that some people would want the pepper spicy if the horseradish spicy became unavailable. As he had no idea whether you might be one such person, it was good that he asked.
Having not read most of the current pit threads, I won’t claim that this is the lamest one open right now.
I love Subway rants, so I was all ready to come in and revel in the bitchyness. Don’t get me wrong, I probably owe Subway my first born child and have singlehandedly kept several local franchises in business. That’s probably why I like Subway rants so much - I’ve seen just about everything.
However…you actually were waited on by an employee trying to be helpful. And this is a bad thing? If I’d been on the receiving end of what you said, I’d be speechless - so much for trying to offer up alternatives.
I agree with you, even though I don’t consider myself a conniseur of all things spicy/hot. But my point remains that this is a stupid thing to pit someone over. It’s not like the kid offered mayonnaise in place of horseradish. His line of thinking was probably something simple like: “If he likes horseradish, he will probably like chipotle. Both things are hot and make things spicy. And the only spicy sauce I have to offer is the chipotle stuff anyway. Hope he likes it so I can make a sale.”
He was trying to be helpful and he gets pitted over it. Perhaps if the thread title had included “lame rant” I wouldn’t feel that the OP is being a prick.
I worked in the food service industry as a teenager. Sometimes people would ask me for stuff that we didn’t serve, and I’d try to appease them by coming up with close proxies. Like, instead of diet Pepsi, I’d offer diet Coke. Or if the customer asked if we had nachos, I’d tell them no, but we have popcorn. The only thing popcorn and nachos have in common is that they are salty and made of corn. But a lot of times, I was able to accomodate folks who just wanted a snack and weren’t looking to satisfy some insatiable craving.
I would have been dumbfounded and pissed if a customer had berated me for “confusing” popcorn and nachos, when I was just trying to be nice.
No, this is a “big deal” because you’re a tool who can’t take a helpful suggestion without having to shove in a lecture proving your botanical/gastronomic superiority.
The fact that the “heat” sensations are different is cause to say “No, thanks.” rather than “You’re an idiot.”
Now… If this young fella actually PUT chipolte sauce in your sandwich when you wanted horseradish, that would be cause for a pitting. Of course he didn’t, so we’ll all just have to be happy pitting zenith for doing his part to make retail the worst job in the world.