BY JOEY SWEENEY | These haven’t been great times for the hoagie, either, you know. Everyone is going on a diet, and apparently half the people who make hoagies professionally went MAGA, and every time Wawa serves one these days, it desecrates the form. Meanwhile, the poor thing is somehow simultaneously being gentrified (see the omakase hoagie room at Pizzeria Beddia) and co-opted as some screenwriter’s shorthand for authenticity (see the Mares of Easttown; see the pride with which they do those accents). It fucking sucks to be a hoagie right now. 

But like… ourselves, actually, the hoagie persists, knowing that dignity isn’t something that others give you, it’s something that you claim for yourself. Amidst the roar of the mob, as we speak, folks are out there, quietly making the culture and industry of hoagies happen, while listening to WMMR in a bakery, or whatever you call the place where prosciutto is made, or out in Bethlehem, PA, where they make Tallarico’s Hot Hoagie Spread. 

There are other hoagie spreads, but Tallarico’s is the one in this household. But if you like Cento, great. Hoagie spread period, brands be damned, is the culture and industry of all that hoagies mean to people, the hoagie culture’s high watermark of invention, a testament to the work of inspiration that is the hoagie itself. It is spicy, and tart, and salty and even a little sweet, and like the hoagie, it gives and gives. Spread this red pepper-y base across a hot dog or a hamburger and watch it actually improve upon these beloved foods. Contemplate its liminal space as a spread whilst blowing your own mind as you realize it was invented for this most liminal of sandwiches. If no one had invented it, I promise you, I’d Inception it for you all as my dying gesture. It’s important that we have it. It’s important that we hold it. It’s important that we know.

Previously: Cosmic Hoagie Mysteries, Explained