Holy crap, the Submaker is back!

It’s a rotten, rainy day, and I’m heading home from the day job. And with the roads as slippery and as slick as they were, I had no plans on taking Interstate 787 home that night. So instead, I traveled on Route 32, a slower thoroughfare with stop lights and two-way traffic.

Route 32 has its benefits, but yeah, I’d rather just drive home and stay safe than attempt to travel 787 with drivers slaloming through traffic like they’re cosplaying Jean-Claude Killy at Grenoble ’68. Yeah, not doing that.

And as I drove through Menands, I passed the old Submaker sandwich shop. It’s a sloped yellow building next to the Schuyler Flatts park. At one point in time, the Submaker had the absolute best cheeseburger subs – a strip of grilled meat on a 12-inch potato bun. Damn, I miss that place. The original owner sold the restaurant and the recipes, and the new owner had the absolute misfortune to run the place just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit. So the place shut down in 2020, and never reopened –

Hey, wait a second. Why are there working lights and a flashing OPEN sign on the Submaker building?

Wait, is the place actually open?

Sure enough … it was. Apparently now under NEW management, The Submaker is back in business. And back making fresh subs.

So I stopped for a sub. Asked for a cheeseburger sub, not even sure if the new owners had it on the menu.

Well, they did. Along with other subs and fixings, too many to mention in this blog. But I have to try this out.

A few minutes later, I was on my way home, and a fresh-made cheeseburger sub was riding shotgun in the car with me.

I can say this – after getting home and dining on my last-minute-decision meal, I can say that as much as I wanted the cheeseburger sub to taste and look the same as it did before, this wasn’t the same cheeseburger sub that I remembered. It was okay, I finished my meal, but it honestly just made me want to bo back there another day and order a different sub.

Look. It’s nice that The Submaker is back in the area. And it’s nice that I can still stop and get a 12-inch and a diet for a reasonable price.

And yeah, it may not be the original Submaker sandwich shop … but it’s still a pretty tasty sub sandwich shop. And I’ll give them that.