The 12 inch Monster Meatball Marinara of Subway

1 AM last night I hit a wall. I couldn’t think straight, I was irritable, I was hungry. Incredibly hungry. Hungry enough to devour something blatantly unhealthy.
The Subway on the corner of 33rd street and St. Paul is perhaps the most brilliant operation I have ever seen. Open 24 hours, 7 days a week, this place never sleeps. I’m almost certain its main draw are party-going college kids. As a result, most of their sales take place between the hours of 12 and 4 am. It’s quite a brilliant marketing technique.
It’s by no means a great place to eat, not even a good place, but it gets the job done.

I’ve been going since my freshman year, and have gotten to know the guys who work behind the sandwich counter. One of the guys likes to fake charge me for tap water and usually I fall for it every time. Based on the many times I’ve been to subway, there is one kind of sandwich that I’ve never tried – the footlong. My sandwiches are consistently 6 inch subs. I was always horrified by the amount of food a footlong sub represents, no wonder we’re all so fat, right?

But considering my hunger last tonight, I did something drastic. I ordered the footlong. And that’s not all. Not only was it a footlong, but it was also a meatball sub with bacon and chipotle ranch sauce. Disgusting. Atrocious, even. I’m pretty sure there were at least 10 or 12 meatballs in this god-awful thing. Meatballs slapped on with globs of tomato marinara sauce, provolone cheese, parmesan cheese, chipotle sauce, 4 strips of bacon on 12 inches of special garlic bread. Oh yeah – and TOASTED (the magic word of Subway). This sandwich was nasty, real nasty.

The first bite of bread, meatball marinara, bacon, chipotle and cheese was savory and satisfying. Meat and cheese, the classically divine combination of awesomeness. After the first 6 inches I was full enough. But no, I bought a footlong for a reason and that was to finish it. So I chomped away, tearing through my 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th meatballs until I was sick. By the end, my sub was hardly enjoyable but it was done, I had conquered the sandwich. But not without some intense nausea to go along with it.