The Godfather at Tony's Italian Deli

The next stop on our sandwich quest was Tony's Italian Deli for The Godfather. This sandwich got mixed reviews, to the utter amazement of this reviewer. Personally, I have to say this is the best sandwich I have ever eaten, even surpassing my former top pick, Carl John's Fried Bologna. But then, I am a person of excess. Give me flavor! Give me intensity! Give me more! Why make ordinary chocolate chip cookies when you can make chocolate chip cookies with oatmeal, double the chocolate chips, and toffee bits? Refined tastes, schmefined tastes--give me simple food but take it to the max. The Godfather is just such a sandwich, especially when ordered as instructed: "loaded."



It looks like an ordinary sandwich in the picture, but appearances deceive. Ordered loaded, as I'm pretty sure the photographed sandwich was not, it was so overflowing with goodies, it was nearly impossible to close. The genius of this sandwich is intense, flavorful, salty meat (salami and capicola) in perfect counterpart with the equally intense, somewhat sour kick of pepperoncini peppers. I was concerned that I would find the peppers too spicy, but instead, they were the ideal match for the meat. Backing up the strong harmony between the meats and the peppers were provolone cheese, mustard, and mayo, with lettuce, tomato, oil, and vinegar in the background. This is the most intense, flavorful sandwich I have ever experienced, and it remained in my mind for days afterward. Future sandwiches on the tour have a very tall order to unseat The Godfather as the sandwich champion of all time in my book. Aside from the intensity and excess, what made this sandwich for me was the three tiers of intensity-matched flavors. Many sandwiches have strength or balance among a few flavors, but it's rare to find a sandwich so optimized for both.

As for the atmosphere of the restaurant itself, we visited the Tony's in Madison, which has a straight-forward deli atmosphere decorated with NYC touches. It's not a place I would take a date (unless the date was even more like me than me), but for lunch with coworkers, I found the lack of pretension refreshing. It's the first place I'd to take any and all guy friends visiting from out of town. Anyway, I liked the sandwich so much, they could have served it just about anywhere--maybe a baby crying or an explosion would have detracted from my enjoyment of this sandwich, but anything short of that, no way. A few days later, I ended up at a sister location (Tony's Little Italy on Whitesburg)--it is more of a "real restaurant" or date-friendly sort of atmosphere, but it was loud and echoey, and I swear the food wasn't as good. Then again, I made the absurd mistake of ordering some other sandwich. Bah! I'll have to go back and order The Godfather for proper comparison. If it's not as good, I foresee a lot of drives out to Madison in my future.

The fare at Jamo's Cafe is a bit of a switch from the typical sandwich experience - at least for me since I had never sampled a falafel before. Jamo's is a unique establishment regardless of what you eat, with more of an emphasis on the "healthy" side with vegetarian dishes and fresh juice drinks. As a newbie, I found the falafel well worth the trip and much better than I would have expected from the ingredients list. Others in the group who are more versed in falafel offerings seemed to think it was a little less than the best they have had, but in general the Jamo's falafel seemed to be well received. My personal view was that I would order their falafel again and would likely even make a special trip to Jamo's for that purpose...also want to try one of those juice drinks next time.

This week’s lunch was held at the long established Allen's Grille & Grog, 9076 Madison Blvd. This was a place I used to frequent when single, indulging far too much in beer and Van Halen jukebox songs. So this was something of a homecoming for me. The place, in a word, is a bar. There’s no way to really sugar coat that part of it. There’s smoking, there’s pool tables, and there’s the general sense of decay that comes with old paneling and alcohol. In other words, I love this place. That said, the menu is pretty generous, providing a bit more than simple pub-grub, including pot roast which almost tempted a couple of us to stray from our Tour-de-Sandwich path.

Our sandwich choice here was the Philly Cheesesteak. We were supposed to order it with extra mushrooms and an ice cold Heineken. Most of us did get the extra mushrooms, but none opted for the beer since we all wanted to pretend we were returning to a hard afternoon of diligent work. But before we could order ours, another table full of 6 or 8 robust fellows all ordered the same sandwich. The waitress, told us that the group comes in each and every week to order the same sandwich. This, I would think, speaks well of the Philly at Allen’s.

So the sandwich itself was substantial and quite tasty. The general feeling was that it was good, large and filling – well worth the visit, but perhaps not as interesting or unusual as we might have hoped for. We sort of decided that we’ve all had so many Philly’s over the years, perhaps we had too many other data points. For example, several of our party (myself included) have been to the City of Brotherly Love and “dined” at either Pat’s or Geno’s, so we may have set the standard a little higher than necessary. I think in retrospect, the Heineken was a missing critical ingredient.

Today's sandwich adventure was the Rotisserie Chicken Panini at Shea's Express just off Church St. near downtown Huntsville.

The sandwich was a overall success based on the team's comments and reactions. This is a substantial sandwich with a nice sauce and the panini bread is great. The consensus was that this is a sandwich you would want to eat again, but maybe would not make a special trip for it again. Might instead try other things on the menu - and several other things on the menu looked interesting.

Shea's also offers several tasty looking baked goods which would likely be worth trying on a return trip. It is not clear what the term "express" means in the name of the restaurant however since it interestingly takes quite a while to work through a relatively short order line, but once ordered the food shows up in a timely manner.

On a personal note, there was an actual pickle spear served with this sandwich was a nice improvement.

Karla joined us today and afterwards came across the following note that suggests there may be additional sandwiches to consider on the tour's list.