I Really Wish This Was Better

Generally speaking, there isn’t a lot of love for Subway. The iconic sandwich shop has spread across the U.S. (and the world) over the last few decades, to the point where they are ubiquitous… but not exactly beloved. They are everywhere, to be sure, with Subway shops seemingly appearing sometimes on every street corner, but the chain is also knocked for its cheaper ingredients, lower quality, and poor service in general. When you want a sub it may feel like Subway is the only option, but that isn’t true. There are plenty of other sub chains out there if you’re looking for something different.

Jersey Mike’s is one such place. Built from a small sandwich shop founded in New Jersey, the chain has spread over the last fifty years to become a decently large franchise, offering cold and hot subs made fresh to order. Like Firehouse Subs, Jimmy John’s, and many others, these shops all exist in the shadow of Subway, doing what they can to be different, and interesting, to get people to come in and grab their subs instead of the food from the big franchise just around the corner. And for many, this works.

But I gotta admit, I am just not a fan of Jersey Mike’s. Over the years I’ve tried their food a number of times, often because my wife likes to eat there. No knock against her, she and I have different tastes when it comes to sandwiches. She’s a cold-cut lady who likes simpler fare. Give her a deli turkey on white with mayo, lettuce, and tomato and she’s happy as I can be. I, on the other hand, want more flavor on my subs. I want the meats served hot, I want a good variety of toppings, and I want flavor. Not just mustard or mayo but actual flavors. I need variety to keep me interested.

Jersey Mike’s, in fairness, isn’t built like that. They have what I consider to be a fairly limited menu with only a few hot and cold options – turkey, ham, roast beef, salami, prosciuttini, cappacuolo, and bacon on the cold side, steak and chicken on the hot side – and even fewer toppings. Want a sub setup for you? Well you can get it with mayo and/or mustard, lettuce, tomato, onion, and the “Mike’s Way” of red wine vinegar, olive oil, oregano, and salt, plus, if you’re feeling spicy, some hot pepper relish. And that’s really it.

For someone like me looking for variety, it’s hard to get excited for that limited selection. It’s a lot of the same flavors – salted meats served cold, or a couple of hot and greasy meats – with a set of cold, fairly bland toppings. When your variety is mayo, mustard, tangy, or hot, that’s not a lot of variety. It’s the one thing I’ll credit Subway for: while they don’t always have the best ingredients, this is true, they have a huge sauce list that you can mix, match, and add, and it means that I can go in there and find a wide variety of flavor options to suit whatever mood I’m in when I want a sub. I’ve never found that to be the case at Jersey Mike’s.

Let’s take my most recent order from Jersey Mike’s, which I ate just a couple of hours ago. Using the app, we ordered a gluten free bacon sub for my wife (the fact that they can handle gluten free orders, and they treat the allergen well, is a big part of why my wife goes there and I can’t argue with that) and a regular portabella cheese steak for me. Now, I recognize getting a cheese steak outside of Philly is basically rolling the dice on food anyway, but I wasn’t feeling cold cuts and I figured at the worst I could perk up a steak sandwich at home with some toppings.

This, right here, should be the first sign that things were bad. I already knew I would have to spice the sandwich up at home because what I was going to get from the restaurant wouldn’t be good enough. That’s in part because the store doesn’t have a lot of options for me, but it’s also because the app further limits what you can do. If you order a sub at the restaurant you can add just about everything they have there to the order. If you get it from the app, though, you’re limited to taking it the way they list it on the menu (without any additional toppings or sauces) or removing some of the default options. For a portabella cheese steak, that meant I got hot meat, white American cheese, peppers, and onions on the sub and that was it. No option for anything else.

We’re in an age where every store has an app, and you have all these options for customization when you’re in the store. I have to say that it is absolutely baffling that the app won’t let you add any toppings to hot subs when you order them online. While I probably wouldn’t put lettuce or tomato on a cheese steak (I’m not a monster) a little mayo, maybe some red wine vinegar, would not go unappreciated. Without, you’re stuck to steak, cheese, mushrooms (because I got that version), peppers, and onions and, the way Jersey Mike’s prepares that, it all comes out pretty bland.

Taking my sub home I took a couple of bites, for science, and then knew I did have to add sauce. I slapped on a decent drizzle of steak sauce, just to lend some moisture and tang, but even that wasn’t enough. It’s not hyperbole to say that it felt like the sub was somehow absorbing the flavors I tried to add and cancelled them out, like the sub was somehow made of negative flavor. We had somehow entered a weird, alternate dimension where flavors cancelled themselves out and sub sandwiches were made of anti-food. “We’ve developed the anti-food particle in the lab. Let us hope it never escapes…” and then it instantly does.

On top of that, the sub was hideously greasy. Say what you will about a subway steak and cheese, but I’ve never felt like I was swimming in grease while I ate one. Jersey Mike’s sub, though, was absolutely dripping with grease. I blame it in part on the meat, which didn’t seem to be the best quality, as well as the cheese. Frankly, American cheese is not real cheese, and it has no place on a hot sub. It tastes plasticy and nasty, and it dumps oil all over the place. I know people like American for the way it melts, but once you actually have to eat it, the cheese is just gross. I really wish I could get provolone on the sub instead of American but, again, when you use the app you can’t customize it at all.

Why use the app? Because I don’t want to talk to people. If an app is available then it should be representative of what the store truly has to offer. That’s not to say that adding mayo or vinegar or any of that would have saved this sub, but just the options for it, or to swap cheeses, would have been nice. The app should be like any other ordering experience, which it is for most other restaurants. I don’t understand why Jersey Mike’s handles their online (and in-app) ordering this way, but that’s their way of doing it and it leads to a worse experience.

In the end I didn’t even finish my sub. I got three-quarters of the way through it (which I only managed to power through because I was really hungry), then felt gross. It was too greasy, but also not flavorful enough to get me to want to eat more. Just a bad, boring experience all around, which tends to be how it is for me every time I go to Jersey Mike’s. If you like their food I won’t argue with you, but what I want from a sandwich isn’t what this place offers. Weird as it is, I’d really rather go to Subway instead. At least there I get some flavor without swimming in grease.