“You don’t have a favorite?” people would say when I told them that I didn’t have a favorite
fast food restaurant. To my classmates, it was very unusual to not know where
the closest fast food restaurant was, and not eating at one at least a couple times a week was almost unheard of.
Since I didn’t consider Subway a fast food restaurant,
I didn’t have a favorite. My family and I would eat there a couple times
a month, so I had a favorite meal but nothing that any of the employees remembered.
When I’d say, “The usual please,” the employee would stare at me, and in their monotone voice say
what they’d say many times a day, “What kind of bread would you like?”
I knew full well that they wouldn’t know what my usual was, but it was still fun to say.
No one except me could ever remember what my favorite was. This was a joke in my family. My parents
would get their money’s worth of toppings; my brother would get a turkey sandwich with three toppings–pickles,
mustard, and pickles—and a side of pickles; I would get my money’s worth and make up for what my brother didn’t
get.
My usual was a twelve-inch turkey sandwich on a honey oat
bun with mayonnaise, no cheese, and virtually every vegetable available. Meat,
cheese, vegetables, and dressing—that was the order in which all sandwiches went through the assembly line. Since there was no use in making it more difficult for the employee, the turkey would be put on first. I liked just enough turkey on it so that there were two layers. This would give me the flavor that I wanted and the protein that I needed.
Next came the vegetables.
Everything was sliced to the perfect size. Lettuce and spinach were put
on as the first vegetables. The lettuce was mainly for the tradition, while the
spinach was for the nutrients.
I liked green olives on next, and twice as many black olives
were placed on after those. Black olives gave me the salty flavor I wanted, while
green olives gave me part of the tangy flavor I was looking for. The rest of
the tangy flavor was found in the pickles, which were put on next.
After that, a few green pepper slices were placed on the
sub. Too many would overwhelm the sandwich, and not enough would mean not being
able to taste them. Cucumbers and onions would be next in the assembly line. Each one would cover the previous layer of toppings.
This would give me the crispness and flavor, but I wouldn’t end up with the overwhelming onion smell on my breath
that made people steer clear from me.
Last, but certainly not least, my favorite part of the
sub was to be put on. Tomatoes had to be placed on last. Nothing else mattered about the sub if the tomatoes were not placed next to the mayonnaise. This was how I ate any sandwich. The mayonnaise was on the
bread, and the tomato had to be directly on top of the mayonnaise.
The hardest part of making my favorite sub was
closing it. A lot of technique needed to be used to do this. They couldn’t just fold the top over and onto the bottom. If
they did this, the fillings would be forced out. To close it, they had to use
one hand to slowly flip the top onto the bottom while they used the other to hold the fillings in place. Still, some would fall out, but this was expected by anyone watching the employee assemble my enormous
sub.
In my opinion, a mouthwatering variety of flavors
makes the perfect sub. Being both delicious and healthy at the same time, I would
say to my classmates, “Why would I want to eat fast food when I can have a wonderful sub prepared just the way I like
it?” Fast food restaurant or not, Subway is still my favorite fast food
restaurant.