Roman Grandinetti and his mother, Regina, opened their first neighborhood sub shop in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. They’ve reproduced it in the lobby of Urbanica The Meridian Hotel, one of those chic, unpretentious hotels springing up lately in residential neighborhoods, in this case South of Fifth. All their sandwiches are named after family members, like Uncle Jimmy, Grandma Lucy and Big Anthony. Regina’s Grocery is not much of a grocery, but a sandwich bar where you can pull up a stool, watch your sandwich being assembled and chat with the person making it.

“Curated” has become a bit of a cliche when used to describe a food artisan’s discerning choices, but it’s a fitting description for the selection of products offered by local butchers and sausage makers Freddy and Danielle Kaufmann. Their meat and poultry comes from local sustainable farms, they use locally grown produce when possible, and complementary condiments are sold and used in their sandwiches, listed on their chalkboard menu.

The banh mi sandwich is the best kind of culinary mash-up, combining Vietnamese flavors with French finesse, incorporating savory spiciness, freshness, tartness and saltiness. There is, generally, meat – pâté, cold cuts, head cheese, Vietnamese meatballs or grilled meat. There could be tofu. You will find mayo; pickled vegetables, cucumber, cilantro and jalapeño, plus Maggi seasoning. This is a mélange of texture: the baguette, crusty on the outside but soft inside, creamy pâté and mayo; chewy bits of head cheese, crunchy shreds of carrot and daikon, soft cilantro leaves.

Some still call this “Houston’s” even though they changed the name a few years ago, but it’s all part of the same corporate family. Whichever location you choose, you’ll find the old-school French Dip Au Jus on the menu. Food lore says this crusty/juicy/meaty sandwich got its start a century ago in Los Angeles, when a restaurateur dropped a roll into a pan filled with meat juices and turned it into a menu item. Today, French Dip seems a slightly elegant if messy throwback, requiring the diner to work just a little for comfort-food pleasure.  

When chef Danny Serfer of Mignonette and partner Ryan Roman decided to open a sub shop, naming it was easy: “We wanted to create another place named after a hard-to-spell sauce.” The concept was uncomplicated, serving classic subs and Italian specialty sandwiches in the historic Alfred I. duPont Building in the heart of downtown Miami, a fancy-ish venue with polished marble floors and outdoor seating overlooking the 93-year-old Olympia Theater across Flagler.