Longwich Lore: The Hoagie In 2019, I wrote the following: Submarine sandwiches go by many names. Hoagies, Grinders, Torpedos, Heros, Po’Boys… the list goes on and on. For the most part, these are all referring to much the same thing. There are outliers–Grinders and Po’Boys, generally, refer to sandwiches with hot fillings, for example, while the majority of these are stuffed with cold cuts–but the commonalities are clear. Long sandwiches, served in long, skinny bread rolls split open for the purpose rather than sliced. Italian-style cold cuts. Cheese, maybe. Tomato and lettuce, oil and vinegar, herbs. Some other veggies might not go amiss–onions, bell peppers, olives, etc., and some hot peppers in the form of some kind of relish are almost always welcome. The thesis, I suppose, was that for the most part, long sandwiches are all interchangeable, the different names owing more to regional linguistic divisions rather than substantive structural differences between the different sandwiches going by those names. And from a certain distance, that may seem to be true. But for several years now, I have lurked in a Facebook group called Hoagie Gurus in an attempt to learn more about this particular subgenre of sandwich. While the people posting there don’t all agree on every specific aspect of the hoagie, they are passionate and they have big-O Opinions about the sandwich. And looking over the images posted in the group–to be honest, there definitely seem to be a lot of similarities. Hoagie Gurus Of course we’ve written about several other Submarine-style sandwiches with varying levels of uniqueness as their own categories–po’boys and grinders are unique enough to rate their own writeups; but Australia’s Continental Roll the Dutch/Belgian Broodje Gezond both share a lot of similarities to sandwiches that I’d call Subs. There are unique touches and ingredients that highlight the differences between our cultural tastes and theirs, and that’s interesting to explore–but in the end they are essentially just another “longwich.” Dialect map of sandwich names. Source: Reddit But we’ve also featured the steamed hoagies of Knoxville, a completely different breed of hoagie. The more typical style of hoagie, let’s call it the East Coast Hoagie–it may be underrepresented on this site. It’s starting to feel important for us to acknowledge that, yes, a hoagie is a pretty specific type of sandwich along a certain corridor of the East Coast. And that corridor centers, as many sandwich stories do, on the city of Philadelphia. You may be more likely to associate the cheesesteak with Philadelphia, or the roast pork and greens sandwich served there as well. But in 1992, Mayor Ed Rendell of Philadelphia proclaimed Hoagies the official sandwich of the city. Hoagies developed in Philadelphia during the first half of the 20th Century, invented like so many American sandwiches by Italian immigrants, but the exact origin is still a matter of some speculation, with alternate competing etymologies. Hog Island: During World War I, the US Navy had a shipyard on an area along the Delaware River that’s known as Hog Island. According to this theory, the sandwich was developed to feed the shipyard workers, who were known as “hoggies”–or possibly the sandwich itself was called a “Hog Island Sandwich” or Hoggie for short, eventually becoming “Hoagie.” Hokey Pokey: According to this theory, the Italian street vendors who originally sold these sandwiches were known as “Hokey Pokey Men” and the term “hoagie” is derived from that name. Al DePalma: According to my friend (and sometimes Sandwich Tribunal contributor) Mary Rizzo, the most likely explanation is that a musician named Al DePalma was looking for work in the shipyards and saw some of the workers eating long bread rolls stuffed with meats and cheeses, thinking to himself, “they look like pigs!” So he started selling sandwiches just like it and calling them hoggies. There are other theories as well. I even read that there’s a common belief that the sandwich was named after big band songwriter and pianist Hoagy Carmichael–and since “hoagie” is a common misspelling of his name, that similarity does complicate the search for documentation. So the hoagie–or at least the word hoagie–was developed in the early 20th Century in or around Philadelphia. But what makes the sandwich unique? What, exactly, is a hoagie? Once again I turn to the Facebook group Hoagie Gurus for my answer. I found this description in a post from early 2025 and despite some quibbling in the comments (“Definitely no need to hollow out a good roll then your just getting the crust of the roll not the chewy inside and crust.” “Vinegar and oil, no mayo.” “Hoagies by nickname have been around for about 100yrs. Taking out the inside of a roll before you make a sandwich is certainly not something they’ve always done. That’s the exact opposite of traditional.”) and the extremely apt summary “Thanks for the AI overview of what people are saying,” it’s a pretty accurate description of all the sandwiches in the screenshot above: A traditional old school Philly Hoagie starts with a fresh baked long roll that is crusty on the outside and soft and slightly chewy on the inside. The roll is hollowed out and cradles thinly cut meats and cheeses leaving room for a perfectly dressed salad in the center. The salad traditionally consists of shredded iceberg lettuce, onion, tomatoes, oil, salt, pepper, and oregano. Many people also enjoy adding sweet, hot, or cherry peppers. One can quibble about individual ingredients, but this is how they were constructed in the last 3 decades of the 20th Century. I lived all over from Northwest Philly, to the Northeast, to South Philly, and there was very little variation from this formula if any. But this description also falls short of capturing what’s unique about a hoagie, so I’ll add a few caveats of my own. These are by no means universal, but they do seem to be common features of a hoagie. First off, the bread is not sliced all the way through as it often is with a sub sandwich or a po’boy. Hoagie rolls are left hinged on one side to keep everything in. Sometimes, instead of clearing out some of the bread’s crumb, a hoagie maker will drizzle some olive oil and vinegar on the bread itself to help keep the sandwich from being too dry. The meats are often laid out fully across the bread, so that when the sandwich is closed up they curl into a C shape lining the bread. The salad–shredded lettuce, thin slices of red or white onion, and sliced tomato dressed with salt and pepper, oregano, oil and vinegar–is usually placed atop the meat rather than between the meat and the bread, so that the salad is encircled by the meat, which in turn is surrounded by the bread. And the bread is important. Not just any sub sandwich bread can form the basis for a hoagie. It should be a good, crusty bread, soft and a little chewy on the inside, often coated with sesame seeds. Everywhere I went in Philadelphia on the 2 occasions I’ve been there, the bread was outstanding. That is often the hardest part to replicate elsewhere. Philadelphia bread, Italian Market And it’s part of why the hoagies that we do have in Chicago–often sold at black-owned southside shops that also feature sweet steak sandwiches, like Taurus Flavors–are so different from the hoagies of Philadelphia. Different enough from east coast hoagies, yet similar enough to each other, that I think they might be considered a variant of the sandwich. So let’s pause and digress for a moment to talk about The Chicago Hoagy The Chicago-style hoagie (often spelled “hoagy” such as at Home of the Hoagy on 111th Street, Hoagy House near the South Shore Cultural Center, or Fitch’s Home of the Hoagy in Country Club Hills) consists of cold cuts, onion, tomato, pickle, and often pepperoncini peppers, dressed with vinegar, oil, and dried herbs, rolled up in a sturdy bread roll with a hinge on one side. They bear many superficial similarities to the hoagies of the East Coast, but I imagine if I were to post one of them on the Hoagie Gurus Facebook page I’ve been mentioning, I’d be laughed out of the group. That’s not to say that they’re bad, necessarily. They’re a satisfying sandwich. But they would not scratch the itch of someone wanting an east coast hoagie. Here’s one I bought at Home of the Hoagy recently. The meats are not advertised on the menu but appear to be a turkey ham and a turkey cotto salami, sliced thicker than you’d normally get at a deli. The salad, as mentioned, consists of pickles, thin-sliced onions, tomatoes, and pepperoncini peppers–no lettuce–dressed in an oil, vinegar, and herb combination. There are slices of American cheese tucked between the meat and the bread–and the bread deserves mention here, because it’s not bad bread, but it is the kind of sturdy Chicago-area “French Roll” that you might normally see used in an Italian Beef sandwich, a bread that is substantial enough to survive dunking in hot beef broth, with a softer crust and a chewier crumb than the bread you’d find at a deli in Philadelphia. Along with my “hoagy” I got an order of quite good fresh-cut fries doused in mild sauce, a kind of thin tangy southside Chicago hybrid of barbecue sauce and ketchup. I need to go back and try the sweet steak soon–and in fact I just realized that sandwich is not currently on our List so I am correcting that situation. Italian Hoagie But satisfying or not, almost nothing about that sandwich–the meats, the cheese, the bread, even the salad–would be recognized by a Philadelphian as belonging in a hoagie. The meats should be the finer cold cuts sold by an Italian deli in America: prosciutto, speck, capocollo, soppressata, Genoa salami. The cheese should be provolone, either mild or sharp, though a fresh mozzarella would be a refreshing change of pace for some sandwiches. The salad would normally not feature pickles (though not everyone is a hard-liner about that) and would feature lettuce. And rather than pickled pepperoncini peppers, the sandwich might be given a bit of brightness and heat by adding a cherry pepper relish. In my mad rush to get things together at the deli, I neglected to order speck, but I did add some pepperoni for fun. For cheese I got a “picante” American provolone, less sharp than an imported provolone but easier to slice for sandwiches. For the bread, I used sesame seed hoagie rolls produced by a local supermarket bakery that are a pretty good–not perfect, but pretty good–substitute for the bread you can get in Philadelphia. And I hollowed out the crumb just a bit to make room for all that meat. Prosciutto, capocollo, hot soppressata, Genoa salami, and pepperoni. Then sharp provolone, shredded iceberg lettuce, thinly sliced white onion, tomato, salt and pepper, oregano, oil and vinegar, and some hot cherry pepper relish. Then I closed it up, sliced it in half, and wrapped it in butcher paper to help it keep its shape. And when I cut it in half, that cross-section looked an awful lot like all those hoagies from the Facebook group. And this is a great sandwich, if you’re a person (like me) who likes big flavors. One complaint about a sandwich like this is that it flattens the unique individual flavors of each type of cured meat into a single giant salt bomb, and I suppose there is some truth to that. But the amalgam of flavors produces its own shifting gestalt, by turns tinged with fermentation’s funk from the sharp cheese or the salami or the prosciutto, then the pungency of onion and vinegar, then the capsaicin heat of the hot soppressata and the cherry pepper relish. Each bite reveals layers, a palimpsest of salted meat upon salted meat painted on the canvas of bread. Turkey Hoagie But the hoagie treatment is not reserved for Italian meats alone. Look at the menu of a favorite Philadelphia hoagie spot, say, Cosmi’s Deli or Ricci’s Hoagies or Angelo’s Pizzeria. You’ll see plenty of hoagies other than those using Italian salume–chicken salad, or corned beef, or ham and cheese. Or turkey. It’s not the specific meats that make the hoagie. It’s everything that goes around them. So I made a turkey hoagie as well. I am not a fan of deli turkey. When November comes around I am a fiend for turkey. I will roast and eat multiple turkeys around the Thanksgiving holiday, one to make stock from for gravy and stuffing, one on the holiday itself, another one sometimes just because there are so many in the store at this time of year. It’s not turkey itself that I find objectionable. But deli turkey is often bland, gelatinous, flavorless. It’s a challenge to make a good sandwich out of it. But it turns out that with some sharp provolone, some cherry pepper relish, some salad dressed in oil and vinegar, salt and pepper and oregano, and a good sesame seed hoagie roll–turkey makes a pretty good sandwich filling. And that specificity, of construction, of the non-marquee ingredients, of the type and quality of bread, the broadness of its applicability and the universality of the result, makes the hoagie more than just a variant of the Submarine sandwich. It is a notable sandwich that stands on its own. I’ve been to Philadelphia twice already, and there are more cities out there that I have yet to visit–but this revelation may require a return visit to explore the city’s hoagies. There’s clearly more to learn before I can consider myself a Hoagie Guru. The post Longwich Lore: The Hoagie first appeared on Sandwich Tribunal. https://www.sandwichtribunal.com/2026/10/longwich-lore-the-hoagie/ #hoagie #philadelphia #eastcoast #grinders #long #gurus #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

Detroit’s Hani It’s not always easy to track down a sandwich’s origin. Some have a known geographic point of origin but are disputed between 2 or more rival restaurants, like the French Dip, which both Philippe the Original and Cole’s Pacific Electric Buffet in Los Angeles claimed to have invented (though Cole’s closed earlier this year, sadly). Some are even geographically disputed, like the Reuben which is claimed by both New York City and Omaha (we’re Team Omaha here at the Tribunal–NYC doesn’t need to claim everything!) Some, like the Club sandwich (whose history we explored 11 years ago) have origins far enough in the past that it’s hard to track down documentation of the precise who and what and where of their initial appearance, while some like the Chinese Rou Jia Mo have documented histories going back centuries, even millennia further! The Hani is none of the above. For once we have a sandwich of recent vintage, whose origin is well known and documented and uncontested. During the 1980s, at the “7 & Mack” location of the National Coney Island chain of hot dog restaurants, a cook named Hani started experimenting with chicken strips and flatbreads, eventually developing a sandwich featuring melted cheese and chicken strips wrapped in a pita, dressed with mayonnaise tomato and lettuce. The sandwiches got populat with the late night crowd, and soon other similar restaurants in the area started serving their own takes on the Hani, prompting National Coney Island to trademark the name and send Cease & Desist letters to any competing restaurants that serve a sandwich named “Hani”–which is one sure way to make sure a sandwich sensation never spreads beyond your service area I suppose. So if I was going to have a “real” hani, I’d have to go to… Detroit! Mindy and I took a quick overnight trip to Detroit earlier this month. We’d been wanting to get back for a while–there were some things we missed during our first visit several years ago, including Mindy’s inaugural visit to Eminem’s fast-service pasta window downtown near Comerica Park, Mom’s Spaghetti, where she tried the Bolognese sandwich. We brought our dog with us–he’s an enthusiastic and well-behaved traveler, and he enjoyed the attention he received from strangers at the “Cider in the City” festival in Beacon Park and during our sojourn at Two James distillery’s tasting room in the Corktown neighborhood. One of the places we’d missed on our previous visit was a little diner called Mike’s Famous Ham Place, about a mile west of Two James along Michigan Avenue. It’s a small family-run place, cash only, with a simple menu featuring ham cut fresh from the bone along with ham-based soups. I ordered their regular-sized ham sandwich on an onion roll, which came with cheese, mustard, and pickle, and I got a small ham and bean soup to go with it. The sandwich I received threatened to render me incapable of eating any Hanis that day–and I only finished half of it! If this is their regular, the large sandwich must really be something. The sandwich was exactly what I hoped it would be, simple, ordinary, thick slices of a city ham, moist and salty, with just enough pickle and mustard to cut through all that meat and a slice of cheese to cap it off. I won’t forget to visit this spot again on future visits. But after a few other adventures around the Detroit Metro area, we made our way to the 7 Mack location of National Coney Island to try the Hani in its native environs. There were several different Hani variants, including the Original, Barbecue, Southwest… I was leaning toward trying the Original and maybe a Buffalo chicken Hani but I asked the girl taking my order which one was best and, without hesitation, she said “CBR.” That is to say, Chicken Bacon Ranch. I hate Ranch dressing. Well “hate” is a strong word–I don’t care for its bland ubiquity, its aggressive mediocrity. I mean, I grew up in the Midwest and like anyone else, I used to dip just about everything in Ranch dressing, the pizza or fries in my high school cafeteria, chicken nuggets, etc. You can bet that if I found myself snacking on raw vegetables they’d be slathered in the stuff–baby carrots, celery sticks, green bell peppers… I’m not sure exactly when I snapped out of that particular food trend. At some point I decided that I enjoyed flavors other than buttermilk and dried dill. But the rest of the Midwest didn’t get the memo–there is still a restaurant in St. Louis that features a menu full of items intended to be drowned in Ranch Dressing, and dozens of Ranch variants to dip them in. I still love a lot of the bland, fatty, carby foods of my youth. I’ve sung the praises of chicken and noodles in gravy, served over mashed potatoes, just the way grandma used to make them; biscuits and gravy; the Horseshoe of Springfield, a pile of bread and meat and fries covered in cheese sauce. I’ll never not love those things. But somehow I outgrew Ranch dressing. I didn’t have the words for it though until Gen-Z invented some new slang. In my opinion, Ranch dressing puts the “Mid” in Midwestern. But OK. Original and Chicken Bacon Ranch it is. The Original Hani came with white meat chicken, lightly breaded and cut into strips, wrapped in a Greek-style pocketless pita with slices of American and Swiss cheese, mayonnaise, shredded iceberg lettuce and diced tomato. The wrap is pinned closed with toothpicks and cut in half, served in a styrofoam clamshell. The cheese is softened but not fully melted by its contact with the warm freshly-griddled pita and there is a substantial layer of mayonnaise between it and the chicken, studded with bits of tomato and with a few wisps of lettuce poking out here and there. When I wrote about chicken sandwiches in 2015 I admitted that I am not a fan of cheese on a breaded chicken sandwich. Something about it signals Filet-O-Fish to my palate; the waxy softness of the cheese deadens the crispness of the breading in a way that ruins both textures for me. But this wasn’t as bad for me, maybe because the cheese was not in direct contact with the breading, or maybe because the chicken itself was not in a solid piece but cut into thin strips. Chicken breast or tenderloin cut into strips? The Chicken Bacon Ranch was more of the same–but with Ranch dressing instead of mayo, and with bacon strips added. Neither change substantially altered the overall impression of the sandwich–the Ranch gives a bit more depth and herbal flavor, while the bacon added a touch of smoky, salty character and a bit more crisp/chewy texture. There’s really not a lot to these sandwiches. I could see that some of the other variants might be fun to try–and I had my own ideas for variants that did not appear on National Coney’s menu–but there’s really not too much to this one. Pita, chicken, cheese, and whatever accompaniments make sense. Case closed, right? Mekka Lekka Hi, Make a Hani, Ho OK OK I’ll DIY the Hani also First, some chicken strips. I marinated these in buttermilk seasoned with salt, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, white pepper, cayenne pepper, and a little MSG. I mixed the same combination of seasonings into the flour for the breading. And since the breading on the National Coney Island chicken was light, I only did a single dredge and deep-fried them in peanut oil. Still, my chicken tenders were crisp and craggy, well-seasoned and paprika-forward but not too spicy. Based on the hindsight of having put several Hanis together by the time I’m writing this article–each one should be cut into 3-4 long thin slices and if you’re using a standard sized store-bought Greek pita, you really only need about 1 chicken strip per Hani. Otherwise they will be too overstuffed to close them effectively. But for my first, Original style Hani, I cut each strip into 2 pieces and stuffed 3 of those half-tenders into the pita, placing the mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomato on top of the chicken instead of between it and the cheese. I was hoping the warmth of the chicken strips would help soften the cheese further–and it did to some extent. But again, in hindsight I can see how the chicken strips help retain the lettuce and tomato inside the pita while it’s wrapped. For this first sandwich I used Halloween themed sandwich paper instead of toothpicks, and it helps hold the sandwich together at least as well as the toothpick method. I used Duke’s mayonnaise, which I enjoy, and decent quality Swiss cheese along with “plastic cheese,” the invididually wrapped slices of American cheese that are not particularly good but are basically exactly what is called for in a sandwich like this. The lettuce and tomato were nothing special, grocery store buys, and the pitas were a decent brand that I have been enjoying. But all these good-to-decent ingredients served to drag down the really excellent homemade chicken tenders I’d cooked up. And once again, the addition of Ranch dressing and bacon didn’t alter the sandwich by much. The chicken was still the standout, even with the good center-cut bacon I used. The bacon did give a nice smoky salty flavor but the Ranch dressing did not significantly alter the flavor of the sandwich from the version with mayonnaise. Chicken Bacon Ranch Hani To differentiate itself, I think a Hani variant needs to go further than just subbing out the sauce or adding 1 ingredient. Adding a more assertive salad element would help, as the shredded iceberg and diced tomato were essentially a non-entity in both my own Hanis and the ones I tried in Detroit. So I made a dill pickle coleslaw–shredded cabbage and carrot, diced red onion and dill pickle, with a dressing made of Duke’s mayonnaise, pickle juice, and honey mustard. Dill pickle coleslaw And for my first variant, I could not resist indulging in a little alliteration. Hot Honey Hani “What is going on with hot honey everywhere?” “Are we reaching peak hot honey?” “Why is hot honey everywhere all of a sudden?” I’ve seen articles bemoaning the rise of hot honey nearly as long as I’ve been seeing hot honey products hit the shelves. Mike’s Hot Honey, the brand that seemingly started the crazy, was launched in 2010, but I really started seeing it around 5 or 6 years ago, and it does seem to have really taken off in the past 2-3 years, to the point where there is now even a Hot Honey SPAM. (I’ve tried it; it’s tasty, but not really anything special.) Some foodies I know have said that they don’t mind hot honey itself but that attempts to replicate its flavor in other products have produced offputting results, while others are just overwhelmed by the ubuquity of hot honey products. But I know that chicken and honey go well together; as I recall, the original Chicken McNugget dipping sauce was little packets of honey. I also know that I like spicy fried chicken. A hot honey chicken tender sandwich sounds like a great idea to me, and I bet a dill pickle coleslaw will make a great condiment for it. And I was right! Though the sweetness and spice contributed by the small amount of hot honey I was able to put into this sandwich was largely overshadowed by the sheer volume of everything else. Still, I appreciated the slight hit of spice, and the little bit of sweetness playing against the sour and salty dill pickle of the coleslaw. I used a single slice of sharp cheddar here instead of 2 cheeses, and that also helped the balance of the sandwich, taking the focus away from the waxy gooeyness of the American & Swiss combo, the sharpness of the cheddar contrasting nicely with the sweetness of the honey. Hot Honey Hani I wanted more heat though. And I got it. Nashville Hot Hani Nashville Hot Chicken is another food trend that has taken off in the past decade or so. I rarely see it done well outside of Nashville though. When made properly, a piece of Nashville Hot fried chicken has euphoric levels of capsaicin heat and flavor without altering the crisp texture of the chicken’s breading. When I wrote about it in 2024, I said this: What makes Nashville Hot Chicken hot is this: after the chicken is fried, the cook adds a special seasoning blend based on paprika, sugar, and a lot of powdered chili pepper. There are 2 methods that can be used to add the spice–the dry method and the wet method. With the dry method that Bolton’s uses, the spice mix is simply shaken liberally onto the chicken while it is still fresh out of the oil, so that it adheres and binds itself to the chicken via the thin glistening layer of oil still clinging to the breading. The wet method involves mixing the spice blend in bowl with some of the still-hot oil taken directly from the fryer and then tossing the chicken in the hot seasoned oil. By using an oil-based slather they are able to preserve the crispness of the chicken’s breading, and with either method, they are able to preserve the heat of the chili powder and keep it from burning off in the fryer by adding the spice after the chicken is already cooked. It is really a brilliant method of adding entirely too much flavor and capsaicin heat to some fried chicken without destroying its texture. As it happens, I still have a shaker of the Hattie B’s hot chicken seasoning, which is seriously hot and flavorful without being gratuitously brutal. So after frying some chicken tenders, I prepared a slather by adding a couple tablespoons of the seasoning mix to about a half cup of still-hot frying oil and mixing it together, then tossing the chicken tenders in it. Nashville hot spices and oil I prepared this version of the Hani using the same ingredients as the Hot Honey Hani–Greek pita, sharp cheddar cheese, and dill pickle coleslaw, but with the Nashville Hot chicken instead of the hot honey chicken. And this was about as good a Hani as I was going to be able to make this month. The Nashville Hot seasoning has a bit of brown sugar, to replicate a bit of the sweetness of the Hot Honey Hani. But what it delivers on more than anything is the endorphin rush one gets when biting into something truly, eye-openingly spicy. Nashville Hot Hani Perhaps it could be improved by adding bacon and Ranch dressing to it–the Ranch might help quench the fire of those Nashville Hot spices–but I’m done gilding this lily. The Hani is a simple sandwich that, through a weird set of circumstances, became a local sensation in Detroit. Maybe bringing Music City to Motown was a mistake on my part, but I’m glad I tried to think outside the menu. There’s potential here, and I bet someone in Detroit is making some pretty interesting chicken strip pita sandwiches–even if a C&D letter from National Coney Island says they can’t call them Hanis anymore. The post Detroit’s Hani first appeared on Sandwich Tribunal. https://www.sandwichtribunal.com/2026/10/detroits-hani/ #hani #coneyisland #nationalconey #detroit #twojames #frenchdip #electricbuffet #losangeles #pacificelectric #teamomaha #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit

The Handwich That Feeds When the Handwich was added to the Wikipedia List of Sandwiches in 2023 and I discovered it there during my regular review of the page looking for sandwich inspiration, I wasn’t sure it was appropriate for the Tribunal. Defunct theme park food didn’t seem to fit into our mission, which I see as a sort of sandwich anthropology, the study of human cultures through their sandwiches. At the time, I had this to say about it: Something called the “Handwich,” an item that was served at the Disney theme parks in Florida during the 80s and 90s, was added to the List. The Handwich was apparently an ice cream cone-shaped bread roll stuffed with fillings. Is this, in actuality, a Notable Sandwich? There are 2 hurdles to clear there: Sandwichness, upon which we at the Tribunal have been notoriously inclusive, and Notability. Sandwichness: we’ve ruled Yes on worse Notability: a long-defunct snack item served by a single corporation decades ago? We haven’t even done a piece on the McRib and you can still get one of those occasionally, and without having to travel to Florida to do it. I have never been to a Disney theme park, and I don’t particularly care about their food offerings, especially this one, which seems gimmicky and dumb. But I’m willing to have my mind changed. Convince me. Shortly thereafter, my friend Jonathan, in his excellent sandwich blog Bounded By Buns, convinced me. Not of the Sandwichness of the Handwich necessarily, nor of its Notability. Mostly, Jonathan convinced me that a lot of fun could be had figuring out delicious things to stuff into bread cones. He made a sweet sriracha chicken tenders handwich! He made a bratwurst with grilled onions and pimento cheese handwich! As always, Jonathan’s take is worth reading: Play-at-home version of the Magic Kingdom’s Handwiches When Jonathan made his handwich cones, he used a premade pizza dough and wrapped it around cone-shaped aluminum foil molds he made himself. I was hoping to find something closer to the original recipe. I learned that a 2022 cookbook published by Walt Disney World, Delicious Disney: Recipes & Stories from The Most Magical Place On Earth contained a handwich recipe and I managed to get my hands on a copy from the library. The book does spend several pages on the Handwich, providing some background on its development and, eventually, a recipe: Here’s that background: HISTORY IN THE BAKING The Handwich, also known as the “one-hand sandwich,” was created by Disney Imagineers looking to bring new and exciting foods to the Disney parks; they were designed to be an easy-to-eat, transportable meal. Imagineer Peggie Fariss explains, “We were challenged by Michael Eisner to create ‘fun food.’ Obviously, we could think about what might be fun, but whether it would be feasible was another question. So we did a daylong brainstorming session. We came up with dozens and dozens of ideas. We then put it through a matrix of ‘how fun is this?’ on a scale of one to five and ‘how easy would this be to produce?’ on a scale of one to five. Then we looked at things that fell within the quadrant of ‘very fun” and ‘pretty easy.” We wanted our guests to associate this unique food item with their happy memories of visits to Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom. Naming it ‘Castle Cone’ seemed like the perfect connection to the beloved Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella castles.” Imagineer Eric Jacobson adds that the Imagineering team experimented at home with samples: “We created a variety of cone-shaped handheld ‘sandwiches,’ based on a variety of cuisines: Italian, Asian, Mexican, deli, and dessert were a few.’ Soon thereafter, they presented them to Eisner and Frank Wells for taste testing; the Castle Cones were approved. Eric and Peggie flew to Orlando to implement the project and pass it over to the East Coast team. Dave Vermeulen, the former director of Walt Disney World Food Administration, recalls, “This was driven by the top bosses; Food and Beverage needed to get involved, otherwise it could become impractical.” Because of the cone shape, the first place that Dave thought of to create the Castle Cone was the factory that manufactured the ice cream cones for the parks. After tinkering briefly in their facility, he decided to hand over the operation to Walter Meyer in the Walt Disney World Test Kitchen. After months of experimentation these savory ice cream cone-shaped treats were brought to life by Disney bakers. They were, however, fragile. Shortly thereafter, the chefs simplified the procedure, cutting bread rolls in half and hollowing them out. The sturdy bread vessels were filled with mix-and-match possibilities, including ham and cheese, shrimp salad, Italian sausage, barbecued chicken, and steak and cheese. Sold primarily at The Lunching Pod (now Auntie Gravity’s Galactic Goodies) in Tomorrowland, the best seller was a chiffonade of salami with cheese, red onions, and vinaigrette dressing. The fun foodstuff’s moniker was changed to Handwich because, well, it was handy. The Magic Kingdom’s Food and Beverage manager Mim Flynn had a front-row seat to the Handwich. She shared, “There wasn’t a lot of seating at the time in the park; the Handwiches were convenient for guests walking or waiting in queue areas.” Handwiches were popular when they debuted in 1987. And while they are off nearly all menus now, they remain nostalgic. So much so that in 2017–in celebration of EPCOT’s thirty-fifth anniversary–they were reintroduced with zesty cheeseburger and cheddar cheese macaroni versions at the EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival. Modern-day bread cone fans, fear not. Another version has made its way west: Chile Cone Queso is served at the Cozy Cone Motel in Cars Land at Disney California Adventure Park. Still hankering for a Handwich? We thought it would be fun to re-create the recipe; see the following pages. And if we’re being honest, a sandwich developed by a corporate R&D department to meet a CEO’s demand for an innovative new product? In many ways this is the culture of the US for the past 50 years–corporate culture. It’s interesting to see that at one point in their development, rather than using custom cone-shaped bread they were simply cutting a regular roll in half and removing the crumb to create their cones, much like the Hawaiian style hot dog (the “Hula Dog” or “Puka Dog”) or the Stenger sandwich served at Calabrian Imports in the Beverly neighborhood of Chicago, which I mentioned in my piece on the Cudighi years ago. But that “official” Disney recipe (Handwich 3.0) uses premade dough as well and wraps it around a cone mold. And look, I don’t expect much here. I’ve never been to Walt Disney World, or Disneyland, and I am not a Disney superfan. I anticipate that theme park food is going to be garbage, generally speaking, low-cost, low-effort slop that can be mass-produced and sold to a captive audience at a far higher price point than what it’s worth. But I was intrigued by these bread cones and wanted to make mine as authentic as possible. So I kept looking, and I found a video in the Defunctland series about the Handwich: This, at least, had a bread recipe, which I’ve transcribed here: Print Handwich Bread cone-shaped bread rolls as sold sometimes at the Disney parks Course Bread Cuisine American Keyword Handwich Ingredients 1 cup warm milk 1 tsp sugar 7 grams active dry yeast 4 cups all purpose flour 3 tbsp caster sugar 2 tsp salt 2 eggs 1/4 cup butter softened 8 waffle cones (for cone molds) aluminum foil 1 egg (for egg wash) 1 tbsp water Instructions Mix sugar and yeast into warm milk and let sit until frothy Combine flour, caster sugar, and salt in mixer bowl. Add milk and yeast mixture along with eggs and mix with dough hook until fully combined. Add softened butter to dough and continue mixing with dough hook until fully incorporated and a smooth dough is pulling away from the sides of the bowl. Transfer to a greased bowl. Cover and let rise until doubled. While the dough is rising, wrap 8 waffle cones tightly in aluminum foil, Don't use too much foil and keep the surface as smooth as possible Remove dough to floured surface, punch down and separate into 8 equal parts by weight. Cover with plastic wrap. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F One by one, shape each piece of dough, first into a ball, then a football, then a long snake, then flatten the snake slightly with a rolling pin. The snake should be about 3 feet long. Wrap it around one of the cone molds and place on a baking sheet, covering as best as you can while working the remaining dough. Combine 1 egg with a tbsp of water and beat smooth. Brush each dough cone with the egg wash and then bake at 400F for 12 minutes. Where did Defunctland get their bread recipe for the Handwich? Who knows! But it’s a soft slightly sweet dough enriched with egg and brushed with an egg wash to help browning the crust. Defunctland builds their cone molds using a cone made from printer paper covered with aluminum foil, while Jonathan skips the paper and builds his cones directly out of foil. The Disney cookbook recipe calls for using waffle cones wrapped in foil, which is the route I took. None of them really seem to answer the question of how to orient the cones while they’re baking. I assumed, as I think Jonathan did, that they should be stood up vertically to avoid flattening one side. However, that made the baking sheet extremely precarious to move, even with an extra ring of aluminum foil around the base of each cone bracing it. Waffle cones do not have a flat even edge on the open end of the cone and it was difficult to make these steable. Also, the vertical orientation seemed to cause the narrow ends of the cones to brown significantly more during baking, since the air near the top of the oven gets significantly hotter than the air nearer the bottom. Halfway through, I reoriented my cones and let them finish baking on their side. This caused some uneven brown spots to develop where the cones were touching the pan. But overall, they mostly turned out pretty good. I wanna hold your handwich They didn’t turn out too bad though. Red Right Handwich With the bread made, it was time to decide what to put in it. There was no single canonical combination of fillings for the Handwich: over the years there were variously ham-and-cheese versions, pulled barbecue chicken, roast beef and cheddar, and tuna salad. Additionally, per Wikipedia: Turkey, spicy taco ground beef, chicken salad, and a vegetable filling with Italian dressing were also offered. Uncommon varieties—possibly seasonal items or tests—included seafood salad, vegetarian versions, and a sweet ambrosia salad filling… A unique Cobb salad version was made available at Disney-MGM Studios after it opened in 1989. Over the years, other items have been sold at Disney in the Handwich cones that were not necessarily called Handwiches, notably the “conewich at Crazy Cone Motel restaurant in Cars Land at Disney California Adventure. They have in the past sold conewiches with chicken and salsa verde, or a scrambled eggs and sausage breakfast conewich. Currently the menu has 3 conewiches: Bacon Mac ‘n Cheese, Slow Burning Mac ‘n Cheese, and the Chili “Cone” Queso featuring “Beef Chili, Cheddar Cheese and Corn Chips served in a Bread Cone.” As it happens, I had some leftover chili I was looking for an excuse to thaw, made using the spicy salsa de arbol left over from a recent post on the Mexican sandwich Guacamaya. This chili is definitely *not* a slow burn, it is in fact quite spicy. But there’s plenty of bread and cheese to temper that heat, and a little sour cream doesn’t hurt either. Chili cone queso But what is it like eating chili out of a bread cone? Well, it’s kind of stupid, to be honest. Yes, I can hold it in one hand–a claim made about the Handwich that is also true of the majority of other sandwiches as well–but the experience is uneven. At the top of the cone, there is too much filling and not enough bread, while at the bottom there is too much bread and not enough filling. The cheese and chips and sour cream toppings run out quickly unless you continually replace them. The seasonal wax paper wrapper I used on this Handwich helped keep it from being too messy but it is not easy to eat neatly, each bite removing a bit of the bread containing what is essentially a spicy stew that will stain your hands, your shirt, and your tablecloth a deep maroon. Chili cone queso I’ve been calling it a Handwich but I suppose that despite this Chili “Cone” Queso being an actual food option at an actual Disney property–it is not a Handwich. It is a Conewich. The Handwich no longer exists, but you can still buy a Conewich. I don’t know that I’m interested in making any of the canonical Handwich flavors though. I’d rather riff on the concept. So let’s get down. Grandma’s Handwich I love a Cobb salad, and to be honest I did contemplate making that version of the Handwich. Can you imagine a chicken BLT with hard-boiled eggs, avocado, and bleu cheese? It sounds amazing in any bread, and as a chopped salad it might just work out in cone form. But I didn’t think about it for long, mostly because I’ve had sandwiching another type of salad on my mind for a couple weeks now. Waldorf salad Waldorf salad is made with apples and celery, walnuts and (usually) grapes with just enough mayonnaise to bind the ingredients together. Generally the apples are tossed in a little lemon juice as they’re sliced to prevent enzymatic browning, and that little bit of prep, not even an ingredient really, adds a bright citrus note that I think ultimately makes the salad. We’ve been making them for a couple decades in my family, and our recipe uses raisins instead of grapes, with some shredded carrots as well, making it sort of a cross between a Waldorf salad and a country style carrot raisin salad I suppose. Print Waldorf Salad An apple and celery salad, great side for a roast ham dinner Course Salad Cuisine American Keyword waldorf salad Prep Time 15 minutes minutes Total Time 15 minutes minutes Ingredients 3 Cosmic Crisp apples diced 1 lemon juiced 2 stalks celery diced 1 carrot grated 1/2 cup walnut pieces 1/2 cup raisins 1/2 cup mayonnaise Instructions Juice the lemon into a large salad bowl. Dice the apples, adding the pieces to the bowl and tossing them in the lemon juice as you go to prevent enzymatic browning Add the remaining ingredients and mix. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving. It’s good though, a perfect side for a Midwestern holiday feast. We make it at Christmas; we make it with the “practice turkey” before Thanksgiving; and we throw it on the table on any occasion where a roast ham is the centerpiece. I like a crisp, tart apple for Waldorf–Granny Smith or Braeburn have been my go-tos in the past, though I used Cosmic Crisp for this salad and it turned out great! The problems with the cone-shaped bread still exist in this version of the sandwich–however, the salad filling is less apt to drip down your shirt than the hot chili–and if it does, chasing down a stray bit of apple and wiping away a little mayonnaise is a small price to pay. It’s not exactly a substantial sandwich–but it works, the sweetness of the apple and raisin accented by the sour brightness of the lemon juice playing against the slight earthy bitterness of walnut and celery and enhanced by the savory mayonnaise. Texturally it’s a treat as well, with alternating crisp apple, fibrous celery, chewy raisin, and buttery little bits of walnut all showing up in each bite. I have more ideas for Waldorf salad sandwiches, maybe better ideas–but this is a promising start. Lay Your Handwich On Me You know what I really wanted to fill a bread cone with though? Cheesesteak. Shaved ribeye, seasoned simply with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Soft, slightly caramelized onions. And Cooper’s Sharp White American cheese melting over the whole, mixed in and gluing the steak to the onions to the bread, rendering the mess a non-factor and bringing all the ingredients together into a harmonious whole. Did it work out just like that? Pretty close, actually. Beef and onions are a classic combination https://www.sandwichtribunal.com/2026/10/the-handwich-that-feeds/ #handwich #disney #jonathan #wikipedialist #notability #florida #deliciousdisney #disneyimagineers #notablesandwich #something #rss #feeds #linksharing #qwibbit