Bad Boy Sub – Mario’s Italian Deli, Broadway, Glendale

mariositaliandeliglendaleThe Bad Boy Sub at Mario’s Italian Deli in Glendale includes pastrami, lettuce, tomato, onion, mustard, mayonnaise, honey mustard, mozzarella, avocado, and spicy Italian peppers. It also includes a bread that’s been trisected, a move I’ve never quite understood. If the roll is too big to make a sensible sandwich, what good does splitting it into three parts do? It’s the same mass of bread, still present in the sandwich. In any case, the bread here is in no danger of overwhelming the rest of the ingredients, present as they are in substantial quantity. And it seems that quantity is how this sandwich lives and dies, as two kind of mustard become hard to pick apart, the rich creaminess of avocado matches that of melted mozzarella, and the whole thing just sort of becomes one indistinguishable flavor. I ran into this issue at Fat Sal’s, although I will say that the quality here is far beyond there. The problem here is that nothing really works together, it’s all just sort of there, one big calamity of disparate foodstuffs. If you can’t send the best, they say, send all of it. I’m sure there are plenty of times when that’s fine advice, but when one is making a sandwich isn’t one of them.

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