I am fortunate enough to live a few doors down from
Primo Hoagies, objectively the top sandwich place in Philly (though I haven't tried Sarcones). However, the place is only open for lunch, and I'm almost never around during the day. Luckily, I got a chance this saturday to test it out.
My first experience with an Italian sandwich was from
Marzullo Brothers in Montclair, NJ, who sold a ridiculous amount of homemade foods, including my alltime favorite: fresh mozz.
Primos is a weird place. It's really bare looking, all white with just a big menu up front. Like the cheesesteak places, there is no real line, just two registers and a dude in an apron who looks like he's wasted away his youth taking sandwich orders.
I got the Old Italian, which, unlike a regular Italian hoagie, has dry-cured capacola and sharp provolone. $7 bucks, about a foot long, with oil, vinegar, peppers and lettuce.
The sandwich was actually much larger than I expected. It honestly had a substantial heft when the guy handed it to me, like when someone hands you a bowl of something and it turns out the bowl is full of pennies or something (good analogy, brad).
Anyway, long story short, I have never enjoyed a sandwich as much as this one. The ingredients were fresh sliced to a perfect thickness (the capacola was thin, but the provolone and proscuitto were thick, which somehow makes sense). The bun was a little warm, perfectly crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, unlike the sweet doughy mess that Subway serves. It was a beautiful thing. I might make this a Saturday tradition.
