The alchemy of any given sandwich is both specific and forgiving. Its stacked ingredients merge and mingle—you can swap out this or that, as long as whatever replaces it serves a similar role. In the Vegitalian, the sweet potato, with its happy mushiness, has a surprisingly similar yielding texture to a ruffled heap of thinly sliced deli meats, and its subtle sweetness evokes that of many salumi. Not immaterially, its bright-orange color looks absolutely gorgeous against the rest of the sandwich. (In a previous iteration, the sandwich was made with sliced butternut squash, which to me more closely mimicked the mouthfeel of deli meat; sweet potato makes the sandwich squishier and less tidy, which offers its own pleasures.)
Every other detail of the Vegitalian likewise replaces an element that the meats provided in the original. Arugula, in lieu of more traditional iceberg lettuce, adds peppery bite. Pecorino, rather than Parmigiano, provides funk. In addition to mozzarella (salty, springy) there is a very nontraditional layer of Swiss cheese, lending a gently savory note. Rather than a conventional splash of red-wine vinegar, the Vegitalian gets a hefty smear of Court Street Grocers’ signature “hoagie spread,” a piquant relish of kalamata and green olives plus a briny, giardiniera-style mix of cauliflower, carrots, peppers, and other pickly things. There’s also a smear of mayo—Italian-combo sacrilege, in some sandwich circles, though I’ve always felt that it boosts the lusciousness of this sort of sandwich. The bread is a soft-crumbed, crackly-crusted seeded roll, with faintly salty pockets of air. To be fair, all these components are present in Court Street Grocers’ standard Italian combo, too—but the result, in that case, is less adjacent to perfection, with too many strong notes competing for the same frequencies.
What I find most wondrous about the Vegitalian is that it’s not a vegetarian sandwich that happens to be good. It’s not a concession to dietary preference, or a consolation prize. It is, in every sense, a more considered sandwich than the typical monument to meat; every ingredient is load-bearing, each element thought through and assigned a job. The result is a sandwich that illuminates, a sandwich that delights, a sandwich that redefines the Italian combo as a structure, a set of relationships, a formula that admits many solutions. The meat never figures, and you never miss it; all you miss, when the sandwich is gone, is the sandwich itself. ♦