Longwich Lore: The Hoagie

In 2019, I wrote the following: Submarine sandwiches go by many names. Hoagies, Grinders, Torpedos, Heros, Po’Boys… the list goes on and on. For the most part, these are all referring to much the same thing. There are outliers–Grinders and Po’Boys, generally, refer to sandwiches with hot fillings, for example, while the majority of these are stuffed with cold cuts–but the commonalities are clear. Long sandwiches, served in long, skinny bread rolls split open for the purpose rather than sliced. Italian-style cold cuts. Cheese, maybe. Tomato and lettuce, oil and vinegar, herbs. Some other veggies might not go amiss–onions, bell peppers, olives, etc., and some hot peppers in the form of some kind of relish are almost always welcome. The thesis, I suppose, was that for the most part, long sandwiches are all interchangeable, the different names owing more to regional linguistic divisions rather than substantive structural differences between the different sandwiches going by those names.…