I bet this was a fun conversation, three old-timers discussing the perfect Italian sub sandwich. The dead-tree edition came with photos, and suddenly my mouth began watering. I may have to pop down the street to Frank Pedota's shop sometime soon.
The pros, on sub perfection | Chicago Tribune
You need to know this about the true, two-handed Italian sub sandwich: You don't want no mayo. It'd be sacrilegious, like cursing in front of your grandma, or putting ketchup on a hot dog around these parts.Hot giardiniera? A must. The bread? None of that soft spongy stuff.
Also know this about the Italian sub: It has been around for decades in Chicago, though the concept wasn't born here--likely it surfaced around the turn of the century in New England.
The sandwiches we see in the city's Italian neighborhoods today are not so much original creations, but grew from childhood memories of Italian-Americans. Along the way, the Italian sub became this tangible product with specific ingredients and rules (if you're from southern Italy, a dusting of oregano is required). Ask Italian sub sandwich makers why they do what they do, they'll say it's what they and their customers ate in their youth.
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Recently, At Play sat down with three of Chicago's best-known Italian sub sandwich makers: Aniello “Red” Fontano of Fontano's Subs, Mike DiCosola of Conte di Savoia and Frank Pedota of Bari. Combined, the three have been making sandwiches for more than a century in Chicago
Tags: Food, /Food & Drink, /Italy
Q: How did your Italian sub shops get started?A: Aniello “Red” Fontano: I had a good butcher shop and an Italian grocery back in the '60s. One day, a professor (back when it was the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle) comes into the store. He asks, “can you make a sub?” I said no. He said, “please, can't you put a sub together?”
The guy aggravated me to the point where I got a piece of bread, opened it and made it the way I like it. I put the capicola, prosciutto, some lettuce, tomatoes and provolone. I went to the shelf, got a jar of giardiniera and put it on there real nice. I told him to pay 65 cents.
The next day he walks in with two other guys. He said, “Red, that sandwich was out of this world. Can you make us three more?” And let me tell you, within a month, the line was out the door. I had to hire two neighborhood women to make the sandwiches. And it just blew up.
Mike DiCosola: We were just in the grocery business. Meat, cheese, pasta, olive oil and that's all we knew. But people came into the store and smelled the mortadella, the salami and the cheeses. They said, “Well, you got the bread there, why don't you make a sandwich out of that?” Whatever they wanted, we put it on.
Frank Pedota: We were set up like Mike, as an Italian specialty store. My father set up his grocery in 1973. A big meat business. When I went to a Bears game, I'd make sandwiches. Everybody loved them. Then people came in and asked if we could make them a sandwich. So I made the sandwich that I liked, the one I'd take to the Bears game. That was about 20 years ago. It started to evolve and more people started to buy it. We had to downsize the meat counter and upsize the sandwich section.
Like I said, Bari's is pretty close to me. Walking distance in fact.
Bari Foods1120 W. Grand Ave.
312-666-0730
“Italian”
$5.75 (foot long)
The first thing you smell, then taste, then hear in this sandwich is the astonishing bread from D'Amato's Bakery next door. It crackles inside your mouth at every bite. Everything else is just gravy: a lighter-than-most giardiniera that pairs well with the peppery capicola, mortadella and Genoa salami. Great texture. Great taste. Great everything.
this shop isn't very far away either:
Conte di Savoia1438 W. Taylor St.
312-666-3471
“Ham, Salami, Capicola, Provolone”
$4.25 (8 inches)
More manageable in size than the other two subs we tried, Conte di Savoia's is a classic, straightforward, no-frills sandwich. It starts with a softer bread that retains tug and chew. It has the perfect proportion of meats and toppings to bread, with aromas of a deli case in Genoa filled with the finest salami. Ask for hot peppers (40 cents extra), and everything -- even the butcher paper it's wrapped in -- will soak up that pungent and distinctly Italian vinegar and oil flavors.
