Italian Hoagie

In the Delaware Valley, a hoagie is distinguished from other sub sandwiches by the fact that it always contains lettuce and tomato. It’s usually made of cold cuts – cappicola, salami, provolone; and when those are the main ingredients, it is known as an Italian hoagie. On the other hand, some Philadelphia steak joints offer a hoagie cheese steak, which adds lettuce and tomato to the usual griddle-hot beef-cheese-onion mix. One explanation for the name hoagie is that Italian workers at the city’s shipyard, known as Hog Island during the first World War, brought bunned lunches that became known as Hog Island sandwiches, a term that eventually morphed into hoagie.