The Maine-style Italian Sandwich

The residents of Maine are proud of their sandwiches. Lobster rolls, sure, you hear about those, but you can get those all over New England (in various styles of course). But they truly have a Napoleon complex when it comes to their beloved Italian sandwich. “Portland’s unsung contribution to the gastronomic world.” “Real Italians Are Only Found in Maine.” “…the home of the original—and the only ‘real’—Italian.” It’s as if the concept of splitting open a long bread roll and adding cured meats and vegetables had never occurred to anyone anywhere else.

I get it though. I myself have my own fixed concept of what an Italian sub looks like–it took me a while to get there. There was a time when I’d order an Italian sub at any sandwich shop I’d go to anywhere, just to see what their idea would be. And it’s not surprising that my ideal version of the Italian sub lands pretty close to the standard Chicago Italian–capicolla, salami, mortadella, provolone, lettuce, tomato, oil and vinegar, with hot giardiniera and on d’Amato’s bread of course. My preferred version adds prosciutto and substitutes a sharper imported provolone for the standard mild but I’ll take a regular Italian sub from a deli that does it right over just about anything else.

What is patriotism but love of the good things we ate in our childhood? –Lin Yutang

Some day I’ll do a piece on the Chicago style Italian. Today is not that day. Today we’re talking about the Maine style Italian sandwich. And how a sandwich consisting of distinctly American bread and cheese, Polish or Danish ham, southern pickles, Greek olives, Spanish onions, and bell peppers that were likely grown in China or Indonesia came to be called an Italian can be puzzling. Turns out it was invented by a guy named Giovanni Amato back in 1902, and the chain of sandwich shops bearing his name is still one of the most popular choices for these sandwiches in the state.

First things first: sour pickles. A reader commented that I should get the sourest pickles I could find. Various articles call the pickles the defining factor of the sandwich. Some are aghast in horror at imitations using mere dill pickles in their stead. I like dill pickles fine. My favorite pickles are the crisp, briny ones like my grandfather made when I was a kid. But I like sour things, and I like try to to get these sandwiches right, so I acquired a gallon of sour pickles.

Were you hearing “Thus Spake Zarathustra” in your head scrolling past this?

These things are sour. Holy crap. I’m not sure I like them very much–they’re different from the type of pickle I could normally snack happily on with nothing else. They’ll be fine in a sandwich, I suppose, but they’re not for the casual eater.

Next hurdle: the bread. The Maine style Italian sandwich uses a roll that is essentially a scaled-up version of the Maine-style hot dog bun, soft, not crusty, slightly dense to handle being doused in oil and wrapped in wax paper full of vegetables. I can’t really source the precise thing locally. But there are plenty of sub chains using bread that is essentially a scaled-up hot dog bun, so I got creative. (read: lazy)

I didn’t use the 50 cent day-olds though. One must have standards.

One splits the rolls open partway through, and opens them, leaving one side connected.

Soft Italian roll

The meat and cheese are added–some say meat first, some say cheese, but a thin layer of each. The vegetables are the real star of this sandwich.

Now to add the vegetables. Sour pickles, a ton of tomato slices (I went too easy here from what I understand), green peppers, black olives, drizzle on some olive oil (or an olive oil and canola oil mixture) and…

Maine-style Italian sandwich

Whoops. I forgot the diced onions. Well I’ll get it right next time. Still, this looks pretty good, eh?

Maine-style Italian sandwich

The real trick though, from what I’ve read, is to wrap the sandwich in wax paper and eat it some time later, at room temperature. Which I did at work the next day (remembering the onions this time).

Maine-style Italian sandwich and chips

Leaving it to sit like that allows some of the pickle’s juices and the olive oil to soften the bread somewhat, and allows the various ingredients’ flavors to soften their sharp edges just a bit. The cheese softens and melds with the bread (unless you put the ham in first, in which case the veggies will get stuck into the cheese in a way that’s also enjoyable). The bread is soft, and the salty ham and cheese combo is familiar, but not overwhelming due to the thin layers of each. The vegetables, though… there’s a big savory and juicy presence of tomatoes, with a crunch and sweetness from the green pepper, a pungency from the onion, and some bitter/briny notes from the olives. The pickles, though, have the biggest impact, and I can see why someone who grew up with sour pickles in their sandwiches would be disappointed in dill as a replacement. It’s a distinctive and powerful flavor, the signature of this sandwich.

Still, though I might just be a pretty standard German-Irish peasant type, I’ll tell you that I don’t see what’s so Italian about the Maine Italian. Boiled ham, white American cheese, diced onions, green peppers, tomatoes, sour pickles, black olives, oil, salt and pepper on a soft white roll similar to a big hot dog bun–nothing about it sounds very Italian to me. Less Italian than, though strangely reminiscent of, this Italian sub I got from another well-known sub chain recently.

Better, though. Mostly.

Jim Behymer

I like sandwiches.

I like a lot of other things too but sandwiches are pretty great