Garden State Pride! Yes The Sub Sandwich Was Born In New Jersey! (Maybe)

We can take credit for a lot of amazing things here in New Jersey. The first college football game was played here, and then there's the whole light bulb thing. But there is one item born in the Garden State that may rise above all the others.

According to Yardbarker, it all started way back in the early 1900's, when Dominic Conti, a Paterson New Jersey grocery store owner, used a home recipe to make and sell Italian sandwiches. And then In 1928 he was at a museum and saw a submarine.

As the story goes, he immediately noticed the similarity in shape to the sandwiches he was selling at the grocery store, and the submarine sandwich was born. Of course that name is just too long for busy New Jersey people to negotiate, so before long we were all enjoying subs.

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In all fairness, there are a ton of stories online talking about the origin of the sub sandwich that  disagrees with the Dominic Conti one, a lot of which focus on Philly, but we chose the Conti story because we frankly like the idea of New Jersey claiming the credit.

If you disagree, you can check out varying stories at What's Cooking America and Delicious Subs.

But for our purposes, we like the New Jersey story. It makes us feel good, and somehow the original home of Jersey Mike's should be the original home of the sub sandwich, right? And there's no disputing the first Jersey Mike's was right here in Point Pleasant . And how proud are we of that?

So, you can do your research, and come up with your own conclusions. But for me, I'm going to sleep well celebrating old Dominic Conti and those homemade sandwiches that started it all at his New Jersey grocery store.