Submarine Sandwich

A counter hand lays a long roll on a sheet of white paper, splits it along one side without cutting through, and builds down its length in a loose order: cheese and meats first, folded into the crumb so every inch gets some of each, then shredded lettuce, tomato, and thin rings of onion. Oil goes on from a squeeze bottle, then red wine vinegar and a shake of dried oregano. The vinegar is the sharpest note over a busy deli counter, and it is already working on the crumb before the paper is folded and taped. The roll gives under a thumb like a pillow wearing a crust, and the first bite is cold, salty, and acidic in about equal parts, with the lettuce crackling faintly against soft bread. A whole one runs close to a foot, and a half is the usual lunch.

The hinge matters more than it looks. Leaving one side of the roll uncut gives the filling a wall to lean on, which is how a fat, slippery load survives a walk to the car. Order of assembly manages moisture: tomato goes in thin and salted, away from the bottom crust, and the oil lands on meat and lettuce first, so it coats them before it can reach the bread. Left in its paper for twenty minutes the sandwich improves, the vinegar softening the crumb until the whole length eats as one tender thing, with the paper going translucent in oily patches along the way. Left for four hours it declines: the lettuce goes limp, the onion turns the whole thing sour, and the bottom half of the roll slumps into damp paste.

The word itself is the best-documented thing about the sandwich. In 1967 the linguists Edwin Eames and Howard Robboy surveyed 100 American cities for what people called a long roll filled with cold cuts, and found thirteen answers: submarine, hoagie, poor boy, grinder, torpedo, Italian sandwich, hero, rocket, zeppelin, Garibaldi, bomber, muffuletta, and Cuban sandwich. Submarine ranked first, and it was the only one in wide use across regions; the rest each belonged to a corner of the map. Pizzerias carried it inland by adding the sandwich to their menus, and chains finished the job. Subway began as Pete's Super Submarines in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1965 and took its shorter name in 1968, which put "sub" on thousands of menu boards.

Today a sub is sold at delis, pizzerias, supermarket counters, and gas-station kitchens, and the ordering grammar travels with it. Customers say what meat, what cheese, and whether they want it "with everything," which at most counters means the full dress of lettuce, tomato, onion, oil, and vinegar. Hot versions branch off the same roll: in Pennsylvania, New York, and parts of New England a grinder usually means a sub that has gone under the broiler or the griddle, so a meatball sub arrives with the cheese bubbling and the crust gone crisp at the edges. The cold build keeps its place on party platters, where yard-long rolls are cut into sections for offices and football Sundays, and in lunch bags, where a half in white paper still means a deli stop that morning.

Italian-American delis supplied the template, and the filling reflects what a Northeast Italian grocery kept in its case: cooked ham, salami, and provolone, with capicola and mortadella at the more generous counters. Roll bakeries in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Massachusetts each turn out a slightly different loaf, softer in some towns and chewier in others, and a customer raised on one tends to judge every sub against it. Hot or sweet peppers, a swipe of mayonnaise, or a scoop of tuna all sit comfortably inside the format, and each shop decides which of them count as the house standard. A sub shop's regulars can tell a roll delivered that morning from one that rode in yesterday's truck, and they say so across the counter.

Three Claimants and a Phone Book

Two origin stories circulate, and both rest on family and local memory. The Connecticut one names Benedetto Capaldo, an Italian grocer in New London, who is said to have supplied the nearby submarine base with several hundred sandwiches a day during World War II, the sailors then carrying the name home. The base itself dates to 1915, but the account cites no dated source, and no contemporary record names Capaldo as the first to use the word.

The New Jersey one names Dominic Conti (1874 to 1954), who came from Montella, Italy around 1895 and opened a grocery in Paterson, reportedly around 1910. His family says he named his sandwich roll after the Fenian Ram, the 1881 submarine on display in Paterson, in 1928. The gap between the store date and the naming date is unexplained, and the family account is the only support for it.

The earliest print evidence points somewhere else entirely. Barry Popik found a Wilmington, Delaware telephone directory listing from January 1940 for a business selling submarine sandwiches, and the Wilmington Sunday Morning Star was running the word by September 7, 1941. A January 1940 listing predates the American entry into World War II by almost two years, so the wartime Navy-base account cannot be where the word started, and a Delaware directory is a long way from both Groton and Paterson, which suggests the name had already left its first home by then.