Togo’s (the chain) is actually pretty good!
She caught your eye like one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
J String-- a gyro pr(Yee-roe) is definately not a sub. It is a greek specialty. That great processed lamb on a rotisserie. mm mmm with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cucumber sauce and if you prefer some kind of awesome hot sauce on a soft, warm piece of pita bread. yummy. my favorite food.
Back on the subject in New Jersey they are subs or hoagies, but i usually say sub.
In State College Pa (Penn State) they are called grinders or hoagies.
so you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts. what’s so amazing about really deep thoughts? Tori Amos
Close…it’s “Grindah.” The “r” is silent.
Law of Conservation of "R"s: Rs cannot be created or destroyed, simply moved from word to word. Example: “I think I’ll have a soder with my grindah.”
Jeremy…
Nobody ever calls me after they’ve done something smart.
As several pointed out, it depends on what you are talking about in addition to where you are talking.
Here in Knoxville,TN:
Sub= any sandwich on an oblong bun with just about any combination of cold meats, cheeses, veggies.
Hoagie= sometimes same as above, but usually means it’s steamed and probably just meat&cheese, no veggies except maybe onions or peppers.
Sandwich= anything between slices of any kind of bread.
BBQ Sandwich= slow-cooked, smoked, pulled pork (sometimes shredded beef) on a bun with barbecue sauce: spicy, tangy, sweet, hot, often with coleslaw…oh, god, I’m getting hungry. One reason I could never go completely vegetarian.
PoorBoy or Po-Boy= not common, but it is definitely a Nawlins/Cajun concoction. I think of fried oysters for sure. Beef? Tell me it ain’t so!
What TennHippie & Rastahomie said, here in Michigan. You can find them all here. We’ve got subs, hoagies, and grinders all here in Flint, and some of the best 'cue north of the Mason-Dixon line. Never seen a po-boy, though, but there’s got to be someplace here that sells them.
mel, Eve and other Delaware Valley posters –
In doing research for a story I was writing at the time (on Mummers of all things), I stumbled upon the origination of the word “hoagie”. It should be relevant here.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Philadelphia area recieved a surprising amount of immigrants from Italy. Often these were young couples searching for a better life before they started their families.
Jobs were tight and, since most of these Italians were unskilled, many ended up working on the Philly docks as stevedores. At the time, many of the arriving ships were off loaded at the Hog Island Terminal.
Every morning young, strapping Italian men would make their ways to the docks with their wrapped lunches under their arms.
These men were collectively known as “Hoagies”. In the brutal dialect of South Philly the word was a bastardization of the place where they worked.
Being from Italy where the main meal of the day was eaten at lunchtime, and with not a lot of many to spend, the “Hoagies’” wives would more often than not, slice open a loaf of Italian bread, fill it liberally with cheap cheeses and meats then top it with lettuce, tomato and the ubiquitous olive oil.
Eventually the name drifted from identifying the men to the sandwiches they ate for lunch.
After being told this story by a former Hog Island Fancy Brigade Mummer, I found this story in a 1956 edition of the old Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. Sorry, that’s the closest I can get to a cite and justification.
By the way, I took GBS to Philly this Christmas season to see the Lord and Taylor’s Light Show and all the other “Christmas in Philly” stuff. She had her first cheesesteak and loved it.
The perfect lunch: Italian hoagie (extra oil, hold the vinegar), bag of Wise potato chips and a “Tahitian Treat” soda.
The perfect dinner: Cheesesteak (extra meat, fried onions, American and provilone cheese), Schmidt’s beer and Tastykake Peanut Butter Tandycakes for dessert.
Breakfast, of course, would be at the Melrose Diner with a side of Scrapple.
A Dagwood
- From the old comic strip Blondie; Dagwood Bumstead’s midnight creation.
Happy New Year Everyone.
the pronunciation of that gyro, as well as the ingredients, change by locale, too. some places it’s pronounced ‘jiro’ (long i). some places the greek pronunciation ‘yero’ becomes hero & it’s spelled that way on the ads. the real gyro may even be the forerunner of most of these other long, meaty sandwiches, but it doesn’t necessarilly always have lamb. i’ve lived all over the country & in chicago you can get a lamb gyro on a long bun but you can ask for beef & they won’t beat you up.
(unlike w/ chicago hot dogs. you ask for something different than the prescribed ingredients & some placed refuse. others look at you in amazement.)
The Hoagie is a Surfers’ term for a sandwich on a bun, started in the 1970’s. (I mean, LISTEN to the sound of the name! That ought to give you a clue.) It is usually served hot, consisting of beef, green peppers, onions, olive oil and cheese along with mushrooms.
A submarine sandwich was named in the 1960s, because of its obvious shape. It is usually served cold, having a variety of meats on it, with mayo, mustard, oil and vinegar, onions, tomatoes and green peppers. (The contents vary according to taste.)
A ‘grinder,’ from what I understand, is the same as a sub.
A Po’ Boy also came out around the time subs appeared, being called so because the bun is smaller, with less contents. Usually they contain less expensive meats, like salami and baloney, mayo and mustard and nothing else.
I was in school in the 1960s when the FIRST sub shop opened up in town. It was an instant success. Shortly after, since I live on the East Coast, the mass of surfers apparently came up with the Hoagie.
Before then, locally, one went to a restaurant or the local butcher for sandwiches to go or to a burger joint.
Sentinal –
I could forward a photo to you (now I gotta go find it) of a deli in South Philly which sold hoagies in the late 1930s. Prominent in the picture are the words “Sandwiches/Hoagies”.
This predates your assertion that the term “hoagie” was coined in SoCal in the 70s. Have you any cite which pre-dates the 30s?
::Scrambles quickly to access the Inquirer morgue::
Oh, and we do have gyros, but the pronunciation varies with the seller(even among the Greeks). The buyers are often afraid to utter anything, so they just point.
We are familiar with Phillies, but if you ask for a grinder, I guarantee you’ll get funny looks and directions to an appliance store.
I’ve been surfing for 25 years (and been fluent in the lingo even longer) and I’ve never heard this one.
Sorry Sentinel. Don’t know where you’re getting your info, but your origins and description of the po-boy are way off the mark.
Several New Orleans restaurants and grocery stores claim to have invented the po-boy, but the most likely source was Martin Brothers Restaurant on St. Claude Ave. Everyone agrees that the sandwich became popular during the depression, so call it the early 1930s.
As far as content, that’s changed a bit over time. The po-boy certainly started out as a “poor boy’s” sandwich with cheap, filling ingrediants but it’s always been a fairly large sandwich. Also, a proper po-boy is served on a crusty french loaf.
The beauty of the po-boy is that it is not defined by its ingrediants. You can make a po-boy with almost any type of filling. Roast beef, ham & cheese, barbequed pork, hamburger, shrimp, oyster, soft shell crab… doesn’t matter - they can all legitimately be called po-boys. (One po-boy shop used to make a half & half fried oyster and fried shrimp sandwich with melted cheese and bacon! Heaven on a plate… if it didn’t kill you!) In my experience, the makeup of your standard subs, grinders and hoagies are pretty much set, with only minor/superficial variations.
Also, although early po-boys were usually cold sandwiches, in recent time, the hot po-boy has become the sandwich of choice. The roast beef po-boy I described previously, is probably the most common type of po-boy today. Fried shrimp or oyster are probably the only ones most tourists see.
BTW, I’m not saying that some people, especially outside of the city, don’t try to pass off poor quality imitations as the real thing, but what I’ve just described is the po-boy as most New Orleanians see it.
And one more thing… po-boys have nothing to to with Cajuns. For that matter, most of New Orleans culture is unrelated to the Cajuns. Two different histories, cultures and peoples. I’ll rant about that someday, if you like.
Here in the glorious Northwesterly suburbs of NYC they are called “wedges.” Why they are called this escapes me. At college in Western New York State, they were called subs and you can call them subs in Metro New York. But they are wedges in the 'burbs.
The Dave-Guy
“since my daughter’s only half-Jewish, can she go in up to her knees?” J.H. Marx