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‘Sub’ standard
Suburpia slim flavor
By Miranda Agee
It was one of those gorgeous five degree days in January that I decided to try the sandwich shop for my first time. However, I would hardly call it a shop. It’s more like a box with a large picture window.
Suburpia isn’t anything new to Milwaukee. The popular local chain rivaled Cousin’s Subs in the 1970s and 80s but was then forced to close down all 20 of their locations due to financial troubles.
With locations in Wauwatosa and Waukesha open for a little more than two years, Suburpia is slowly trying to regain their Milwaukee fame by opening another location on the East Side.
It was one of those gorgeous five degree days in January that I decided to try the sandwich shop for my first time. However, I would hardly call it a shop. It’s more like a box with a large picture window.
The menu was quite expansive, rivaling the selection count of another popular sandwich chain in town, Jimmy John’s. I looked at a sandwich called The White House ($5.45).
This is a larger version of the aptly named sandwich The Camp David ($4.60) which includes ham, turkey, cheese, tomato, onion, lettuce and mayo.
I handed the cashier my money and she handed me a receipt. On the bottom it said, “Please keep it in the bag.” I wondered what that was supposed to mean. Was it safe sex awareness month or are they trying to protest the ban on plastic bags its neighbor, Whole Foods Market, has passed?
Well, it wasn’t until my sandwich maker extraordinaire arrived from behind the glass-block partition with my sandwich that I got what the receipt was trying to tell me.
All of Suburpia’s subs come in a plastic bag that fits perfectly over it. You, the devourer, are supposed to push up your sandwich through the plastic bag, much like a push-up pop. Everything that may fall out from the bottom of the bread does so in a neat fashion. The bag does all of the dirty work by not allowing the mess to fall on your jeans.
How nice is that? Suburpia cares about our future dry cleaning bill. I like them already.
But then I took the first bite. And then the second and third and although the bread was firm and held the inside together nicely, the sandwich as a whole was missing something very important: flavor.
I purposely asked for no mayo because the condiment can easily overpower anything it gets its greedy hands on. The flavors of the two meats melded into one another and the tomato tasted the way many out-of-season tomatoes do—like a cotton swab.
My next two sandwiches were no better. The Reuben James ($4.75) was nothing more than a mayo sandwich (go figure, I completely forgot my no mayo rule) and The King consisted of the regular sandwich fillers (lettuce, tomato, onion etc.) and flaky crab meat. Undoubtedly, it was imitation crab meat, but what could I expect for $3.75?
Suburpia is nothing special. I’m sure many of you picking this up somewhere on campus will disagree with me because it is a very college kid friendly type of eatery. But, I promise, the minute you start chewing your White House sub, you’ll kick yourself in the shin and say, “Why didn’t I just hit my speed dial and get Jimmy John’s?” You know how I know that? Because I said the same thing.
C- (because they have great bread and care about my dry cleaning expenses.)
> Comments
jack on Feb 28, 2008 at 11:38 AM:
Nothing special? Have you no taste buds? The Reuben James was nothing more than a mayo sandwich - did you ask for it with no meat?
You kept bringing up Jimmy John's, which obviously means you have no taste buds. It is of course the King Louie, and I would like to know where you get actual crab meat on a seafood sub.
The place gets a C- because of awesome bread and they care about YOUR dry cleaning? This article gets an F.