Aggghhhh ( scoffing sigh ) Madison Avenue, “let’s spend our budget on marketing rather than the product”.
Let’s face it: Subway is to sandwiches what Domino ( or Papa John’s ) is to pizza, and this sounds like the recent kick when Domino tried to reinvent their pizza in the “we don’t really suck…much” program. “Mmmmm. This sizzle tastes so good…better than the steak itself”.
I’ve had Subway sandwiches that were satisfying enough as meals when there were no other options. It’s been my observation that the only people that “like” Subway fall into two groups:
Those that that have better options but are cheap. I mean cheap; not frugal, not thrifty. Cheap. There is a difference.
Those that don’t have other options. The ones that live in sparsely populated areas where the center of commerce is a gas station/convenience store/subway.
You’re missing a third category; people who just happen to want Subway despite having money and options. Sometimes I’m in the mood for some authentic San Diego-style Mexican food from the taco shop near me, but sometimes I’d just rather have Del Taco. Sometimes I’m in the mood for a sub from our local chain that’s honestly better quality and less expensive than the nationals, but other times I want a footlong spicy Italian on herb and cheese with pepperjack, toasted, with tomato, onion, pickle, jalapeno, pepperoncini, oil, vinegar, and oregano.
My local sub shop is a New York-style deli (owned and operated by a real New Yorker), and I enjoy their sandwiches a lot. But I work third shift, and they close around 3pm, before I wake up. On my days off, I’ll usually stop in at least once for food and conversation.
But there are times on my way to work that I want a foot long meatball with pepper Jack, loaded with pickles, Parmesan and oregano.
So, what’s the difference? I “like” Subway. One of the reasons is that it is cheaper than other sub shops.
It also has a wider selection of fresh veggies and other toppings. I prefer Jersey Mike’s bread and meat, but Subway has better toppings, and it’s cheaper. I think Jimmy John is about the same quality, but is more expensive and has very few topping choices. The local sub shops in my locality range from about Subway quality to significantly better, but they generally have slower service and are significantly more expensive. I can afford a Subway combo meal pretty much every day for lunch. I can’t afford to eat at any other sub shop every day for lunch.
I occasionally eat at other sub shops, but for me personally, the cost-to-quality ratio tends to strongly favor Subway. The sub shops that have better taste quality aren’t enough better to me justify the higher cost.
You’re missing the third option, which is where I’d guess most of their customers would fall: People who are not pretentious food snobs and who simply think Subway tastes good.
I can’t figure out this quote thing… I agree with Eyebrows. I like Subway. I love the smell of of the bread. My go to is toasted flatbread, turkey, pepper jack cheese, a bit of mayo, and pickles. Make a foine sandwich.
Horrified Subway Execs Assumed People Were Buying Footlongs To Share With A Friend
The woman packing the remainder of the Burger King chicken sandwich into her purse for later was pretty funny but the dog dish piled high with Taco Bell earned a genuine chuckle. That’ll be a real mess in the morning, better get some wipes.
My understanding is that the new bread has less sugar than earlier versions.
The roast beef sandwich, for starters, will not reappear until the fall, and because the same Angus beef appears on the new Subway club, that will not be available until later, too.
Jimmy John’s has really good bread. Probably the best bread of any of the chain sub restaurants. That’s really their only positive, though. They have exactly one kind of cheese, they don’t even have pepperoni (and to heck with any of you east coast purists who insist pepperoni doesn’t belong on an “Italian sub”, because y’all salami-and-capicola heroes are bland as hell), they don’t offer any hot sandwiches, and good luck if you want any kind of sauce other than Hellman’s mayo, mustard, or “avocado spread”.
Jersey Mike’s is good quality all over, and they have the best cheesesteak you can find at a chain, but their toppings are also limited, they’re considerably more expensive than Subway or Jimmy John’s, and so far as I know there’s no way to get a deli sub served hot.
I used to love Quizno’s, but for all intents and purposes they don’t exist in this part of the country anymore, and even before they all went out of business they had long since done away with DA PEPPA BAH.
I’ve eaten at Firehouse Subs exactly once and I wasn’t particularly impressed, and haven’t felt the desire to try it again.
Out of the big chains, Subway easily has the most options, the most customizability, and the best portion size for your money. IMO, if you get a bad sub at Subway, it’s your own fault as much as it is the fault of the “sandwich artist”.
Personally, I’d much rather get a sub from Meconi’s, a small local chain which is similar in quality and style to Jersey Mike’s for about half the price and can actually toast a cold sub if you want them to. They have limited hours though, they’re closed on Sundays, and there are at least three Subways that I can get to in less time than it’d take for me to get to their nearest location, so if I’m in the mood for a sub, Subway is usually where I end up.
This all started with a lawsuit. Anybody can file a lawsuit.
The New York Times (subscription may be required) had samples tested and the lab reported:
“No amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample and so we obtained no amplification products from the DNA,” the email read. “Therefore, we cannot identify the species.”
The spokesman from the lab offered a bit of analysis. “There’s two conclusions,” he said. “One, it’s so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification. Or we got some and there’s just nothing there that’s tuna.” (Subway declined to comment on the lab results.)
But the article also added:
Even the plaintiffs have softened their original claims. In a new filing from June, their complaints centered not on whether Subway’s tuna was tuna at all, but whether it was “100% sustainably caught skipjack and yellowfin tuna.”
With all testing, there are major caveats to consider. Once tuna has been cooked, its DNA becomes denatured — meaning that the fish’s characteristic properties have likely been destroyed, making it difficult, if not impossible, to identify.
So the claim may not be completely without basis but that doesn’t mean it’s true.
I"m not sure I’d call it really good bread, but damn if I’m not a sucker for their bread. Back in college twenty some years ago I used to work there and never got sick of the sandwiches. It’s all basic cheap-ass cold cuts, but with lettuce, tomato, onion, vinegar, oil, and hot peppers, it did the trick.
For the longest time, I just couldn’t stand Subway. That peculiar scent to its bread or whatever it is just turned my stomach. Yuck. I could be walking in the mall a hundred yards away and catch a whiff of that stench. Eventually, I grew used to it. Still hate the smell, but if I’m in the mood for a quick salad-on-bread in the middle of the night with incidental cold cuts, Subway is what I go for, as there’s no good 24 hour options. I’ll pick whatever the 6-inch of the the day is, pile one my usual sandwich veggies (lettuce, tomato, onion), maybe some olives, maybe some cukes, giardiniera, oil, vinegar, and it’ll do the job and I can feel vaguely healthy about it. Untoasted, please. I like my cold cut subs cold.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Subway that offers giardiniera, but then again I’m a long way from Chicago.
I just wish they’d put the pizza sub back on the menu - ask for a spicy Italian with marinara on it and the sandwich artist just looks at you like you’re speaking Welsh.
As far as I know, it’s a Chicago-area only thing, yes. I think it may be written into the zoning ordinances for opening a commercial sandwich establishment.
No, the claim is essentially without basis. As other reporting has shown, proteins get denatured when cooked, and canned tuna is always pre-cooked. The type of testing that the NYT performed is not capable of detecting the DNA of the protein once it has been cooked, due to the denaturing. The testing required to do such a thing isn’t as commonly available, and Subway has provided evidence of sending its tuna to those labs and getting it confirmed as being from tuna.
The NYT engaged in very questionable journalism because their own article basically admits that the testing they performed was unlikely to be conclusive, but they ran a scare-headline anyway. Subway tuna is pretty standard canned tuna and canned tuna is fairly regulated, it would be fairly irregular in the United States for any fish cannery to be trying to pass off anything as the wrong type of fish without serious consequence.
And to reiterate something I’ve said in a previous thread; if Subway had developed a fish-free tuna analogue that looks like tuna, smells like tuna, tastes like tuna, and was less expensive than tuna (which is probably the cheapest canned fish there is), they wouldn’t be marketing it as tuna and hoping that nobody notices and that everyone who’s in the know keeps it a secret forever. They’d be openly marketing it as plant-based tuna, mixing it with Vegenaise, selling it well above cost, and selling it to the vegetarian/vegan market and making much more money in the process.
I haven’t been in a Subway in 3-4 years, and I haven’t regularly eaten at one in about 10, but back in the 2010s there was one near where I worked at the time that I frequented a lot for lunch. Back then they had what was called “sweet peppers” that looked just like the giardiniera, I wonder if that’s the same product and just marketed with a different name in certain regions. I’ve also seen jars of the red/green pepper mixture sold in grocery stores most of my life, and usually labeled as “sweet peppers”, I don’t think I’d ever heard the term giardiniera until this thread.
Giardiniera is usually a mix of pickled cauliflower, carrot, celery, onion, olives, and various peppers, and the pieces may be finely chopped or in large chunks, as in these photos;
It’s an indispensable accompaniment to an Italian beef sandwich, and it’s fairly similar to the olive salad that goes on a muffuletta.
I’ve heard it referred to as “hot peppers” or “hot mix”, but never as “sweet peppers” - in Chicago lingo, that’d be julienned strips of roasted bell pepper.
In either event, neither giardiniera or “sweet peppers” are available at Subways around here - we’ve got our choice of lettuce, tomato, red onion, pickle, cucumber, spinach, black olive, jalapeno, and pepperoncini, and that’s about it.
Yeah the mixture I’ve seen at Subway labeled sweet peppers definitely doesn’t have carrots or cauliflower, it’s solely green and red peppers. It’s actually mentioned as a “Might Have” under the veggies section on this page:
