Torpedo Vs Sub: What's The Difference Between These Sandwiches?

You've probably heard a "sub" or "submarine sandwich" being ordered at your local sandwich shop plenty of times — a nice Italian sub might even be your favorite on-the-go item. If you're from New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut, your sandwich might even be called a "torpedo."

Obviously, your local shop and all of the best subs in LA aren't secretly a front for the military. A "submarine sandwich" is called such simply because it kinda looks like a submarine when you think about it, having that same elongated, cylindrical shape, just that your sandwich is meatier and not quite as waterproof. "Torpedoes" are the same idea — people started calling them this because they look like torpedo missiles that, fun fact, are shot out of submarines.

What's even funnier is that, by all means and purposes, subs and torpedo sandwiches are practically the same thing: a long bread roll of six inches or more (anything less doesn't count), split lengthwise and stuffed full of ingredients like meat, cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes (there are plenty of ways to upgrade your meatball sub too). Some places make torpedoes a bit slimmer than subs to mimic the same size difference between the real-life military hardware. But honestly, when's the last time you've looked at the width of your sandwich when you tucked in? Call it a sub or a torpedo — you're likely getting the same thing.

Sub and torpedo sandwiches belong to the unfortunate club of foods that everyone knows the name of, but nobody knows where (or when) the names started. We've got a couple of leading theories though! The most popular story about the first submarine sandwich started with Benedetto Capaldo, a sandwich shop owner in New London, Connecticut. It's said that sailors and submariners from the nearby Naval Submarine Base New London were among his biggest customers, so much so that, at one point, he had a massive order of 500 sandwiches addressed to the base. One day, Capaldo decided to just use "subs" as shorthand for the submarine sailors' sandwich orders, and it just stuck.

It's a nice, plausible-sounding story, but the name "sub sandwich" appeared in print way back in the '30s, a full decade before the U.S. entered World War II. So even if Capaldo's a real character, he's unlikely to be the first to come up with the name. There are several other versions of this story, but none of them are more credible than the others.

As for torpedoes ... we've got nothing. Zero origin story and zilch shopkeeper. If we're to guess, someone heard "submarine sandwich" and thought, "Hey, what comes out of submarines?" And that's how we got torpedo sandwiches, with three states loving it so much that they decided to pick it up and run with it as the name for their six-inch sandwich. In any case, while we'll probably never know the real origin of these sandwiches, one thing's for sure: They're darn tasty no matter what you call them.