This isn't a biased blog at all. I would never come out and say that New Jersey is the most important culinary state in the entire country or that the contributions of 9,288,994 people living on 8,722 (mostly beautiful, historically toxic) square miles have done nothing but positively influence our national culture. Nope, you won't find anything like that here. This project is supposed to highlight every state's sandwich contributions, not just my home state. So please try to look past all of the "top food lists" (who writes these things anyway) that have New Jersey pizzerias, delis, and restaurants holding the majority. It really isn't fair to all of the rest of the states that have brought me so much sandwich joy over the last several months (with the exception of Kentucky, for real guys, Hot Brown, what the fuck). There are a few directions you might think NJ's state sandwich could go: Pork roll, egg, and cheese? Sausage and peppers? Sloppy Joe? All contenders. But there is one sandwich that you can find anywhere in the country at any time in any (respectable) deli: The Italian Sub. Yes, I call it a sub, because that's what we call it in New Jersey, not a hero, not a (pukes) hoagie. As you can imagine, there's a lot going on when your state sits in between two of the largest, original American cities so let me break this down for you. A great wave of Italian immigration came to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s, mostly settling in New York City and Philadelphia, eventually spreading to all of that open "garden" space in New Jersey following WW2. Immigrants from Naples brought with them the Italian sandwich, made with crusted bread and stuffed with cured meats and cheese. Legend has it that in 1910, Dominic Conti began selling these sandwiches on Mill Street in Patterson, NJ who observed the similarity of shape with the first experimental submarine (built on the docks of Elizabeth) thus naming the sandwich the "sub." This predates the Italian sandwich being called anything else but if you must know why it is also called the hero or hoagie you are in luck that this former History major is feeling generous today. The name "hero" is credited to NY Herald Tribune food writer Clementine Paddleford (electric name) who wrote in 1930 that you needed to be a hero to eat the giant-sized Italian sandwich from James Manganaro's deli in New York. Don't worry, the origin of hoagie is just as fun. Hog Island was a shipyard in the area of Philadelphia during World War I and employed mostly Italian immigrants. The workers were nicknamed "hoggies" because Hog Island, duh, and the lovely people of Philly, with their cute, backwater accents pronounced that word as "hoagie." The name stuck when South Philly neighborhood delis began offering the "hoagie" as the featured sandwich which became a household name once Wawa began selling them in the late 1970s (I do love Hoagiefest.) There are about a million places I could go to get one near me but in keeping with tradition, I will be constructing my own Italian sub today. Let's see how it goes.
