Super Sub
Every city and every town has that one neighborhood restaurant that's been around forever. They serve big portions at an affordable price, and in Beverly, Massachusetts, that place is Super Sub. We are on Cabot Street in Beverly, and Super Sub has been here since 1970 so for over 55 years, all the hungry people from the North Shore have flocked here to get gigantic sandwiches at a price way less than you would expect to pay. These das, it's owned and operated by Paul Guanci. He's the guy you see behind the grill chopping up all that steak all day long, and he's basically like the unofficial mayor of Beverly.
“Super Sub is where we make everything from scratch. I always call it a dysfunctional family business. What makes our place special is I have a tremendous team have been with me for years, and I think we make the best steak sandwiches on the North Shore anyway, but we have people that will fly in from Florida, and their first stop is here.”
And every time they're serving a sandwich, you hear their catch phrase,
“Salt and pepper, here to go. Salt and pepper, here to go. Salt and pepper, here to go.”
Paul basically grew up in this business, so this guy knows everything there is to know about making a great steak and cheese sub.
“We get our steak delivered fresh, and then we cut it into strips, we block it up, put it on the slicer, and then we slice it ourselves. But, you know, we try to put on that show on the grill. At 60, t's getting a little old, but that's what people want to see. I mean, I don't know anything else.”
They have a few different styles. Here. You can get the straight up plain, traditional steak cheese. That's it. My personal favorite here is definitely the steak bomb. I mean, talk about an explosion of flavors. The steak bomb has the steak, the American cheese, plus you got peppers, you got onions, and you got some grilled salami in there as well. Once you pack a good pound of all that good stuff into a nice fresh sub roll, you end up with a serious explosion of flavor. These guys aren't even playing fair. It's melting, it's messy, it's drippy, but it's ridiculously delicious. Super sub. You dropped the bomb on me.
If you want to bring your steak and cheese to the next level, you got to try the buffalo chicken steak and cheese. Now the history of this sandwich starts with the Endicott College kids. This this is one of their favorite spots.
“A couple of guys came in and they said, Hey, can I get a cheese steak? But I want buffalo fingers mixed in with it. And it's really taken off with the younger crowd.”
You have your regular steak and cheese sandwich, then you have chicken tenders, then you have their house made buffalo sauce. I'm loving the extra spice and a little bit of the butteriness you get from that buffalo sauce. And the key is all about the texture, the soft, finely chopped steak and a nice big chunk of white meat chicken. It shouldn't work, but it does.
Having been born and raised in this area and going to a lot of Red Sox games, I am no stranger to a sausage with peppers and onions sub. Here at Super Sub, they do the sausage sandwich a little bit differently. It all starts with the sausage. They actually use Italian sausage, and they actually shave it down thin, as opposed to a big chunk of sausage or a full sausage link. When you shave it, you get more contact on that grill. Just mix it up with some peppers and onions and pile it onto a nice sub roll. It might not be quite as good as a Sausage Guy sandwich outside of Fenway for a Red Sox game, but it's pretty darn close. That's a great sausage sub sausage here. Get your sausage here.
When this place opened up back in 1970, there were only six subs on the menu, and this is one of the original six: the classic Italian meatball sub. This meatball recipe dates back generations in the Guanci family, a large sub here has four of these gigantic meatballs stuffed into it, along with their homemade marinara sauce, provolone and some sprinkled Parmesan. The key is the consistency of the meatballs and the roll really soaks up all of those juices and all that sauce, so it gets nice, soft, easy to eat and impossible to stop eating.
Now let's kick it old school. They have an entire section of this menu devoted to egg subs. It's essentially an omelet stuffed into a sub roll. They crack the eggs fresh, they mix it up with some vegetables, pour it right onto the griddle, make your omelet until it's nice and puffy and crispy around the edges. I like to get it western style. Add some nice chunks of ham in there as well. So you've got egg, you got ham, you got cheese, and you got their famous sub roll. They're actually open for breakfast every day. So I think this is the perfect breakfast solution. That is egg-cellent. Listen, everybody's looking to stretch your dining dollar these days, and if you want a lot of good food made fresh for not a lot of money. You can't do a much better job than the legendary Super Sub in Beverly, Massachusetts.
“You know, I put my heart and soul in here for 39 years you don't get sandwiches fresh at the price that we charge anywhere else, I have people come in and say, hey, you know what? I'm from Philly, and there's nothing better than a sub. The sub cheese steak. So how do you beat that?”
It's super.
