Redesigning Subway 🥪
Turning American Classics Asian — Season 2, Episode 5!
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Turning American Classic’s Asian: Subway 🥪
Subway is the most popular sandwich chain in America, but it’s crazy to me that with all that capital, they barely take any risks! Like if I were on the marketing team at Subway, I’d have a field day with my insane marketing budget dropping limited edition sandwiches and packaging that pushed the cultural boundaries rather than just sticking with just the one “chicken teriyaki” sub for the last 15 years and calling it a day!! And so, if I were to make my own sandwich shop to compete with Subway, here’s what i’d make:
Making the brand 📦
I ended up spending two months living in New York this summer, and the best sandwiches that graced my midwestern mouth were the ones made in bodegas. I wanted to pay homage to the humble bodega, an American icon in itself, and create Asian versions of those delicious sandwiches that are a staple of New York City.
As soon as I landed on the bodega theme for the brand, I knew the brand name had to be Bodega Venetta (yes I know it’s spelled Veneta but I don’t want to get sued hahah). It felt too cheeky not to pass up a reference to Bottega Veneta, a luxury brand known for their $4000+ woven purses that literally look like every POC’s basket weave baskets and bags that have been around for centuries.
Even Bottega’s $3000 crossbody bags literally look just like pusô, a Filipino dish of sticky rice wrapped in banana or coconut leaves!
I had to reclaim the basket weave for the culture hehe, so the to-go container for these Asian bodega themed sandwiches became woven purses inspired by the basket weave designs of Filipino puso and Indonesian ketupat (among many others) that the Bottega bags reference.
Turning the sandwiches Asian ✌️
There are two sandwiches that felt quintessentially New York when ordering at bodegas. The BEC (bacon, egg and American cheese) and the chopped cheese (ground beef chopped with melty cheese on a hero roll, a staple of New York bodegas with origins in Harlem)
For the BEC, Filipino pork sisig, seasoned with calamansi, soy sauce, onions, and chilis, replaces the bacon for a savory and bright filling that pairs so well on egg, melty cheese, and toasty bread.
For the chopped cheese, I wanted to pay tribute to the community of Bengali immigrants who married into Black and Puerto Rican families in Harlem. The beef is seasoned with cumin and Kashmiri chili powder among others to represent the Bengali immigrants. Lime, cilantro, and tomato paste round out the beef’s flavors representing the Puerto Rican immigrants. The ground beef is seared on a griddle and chopped with American cheese and onions where it’s then slathered on a hero roll topped with slices of tomato and shredded lettuce.
Of course it’s not a bodega without the rows of cigarettes being sold behind the register, so I had to make my version of cigarettes by turning them into cookies. To get the cookies to look like cigarettes, I took a big boba straw and stabbed it through a cylinder of white sesame shortbread dough, then had to blow the dough out of the straw to basically poop the dough out. Surprisingly successful!!
Okay controversial but cigarettes, or at least the boxes, are weirdly nostalgic for me. My parents were both smokers when I was a kid (they hid it very poorly hah, but they quit by the time I was a teen). I remember always rummaging around the sink while I pooped and finding classic, vintage Chinese cigarette boxes that felt like little hidden treasures. These are my tribute to those cigarettes, featuring my mom looking RICH like she’s the kingpin of some Chinese New York mafia hah!
Introducing, Bodega Venetta 👜
The final design! A sandwich brand that turns iconic New York bodega sandwiches into new Asian American classics.
A reimagined version of what a brand like Subway could create, with sandwiches that pay homage to iconic American staples like the BEC and chopped cheese but with flavors and ingredients from different cultures.
A sandwich chain that isn’t afraid to be playful, featuring sweets like these cigarette cookies that are made with white sesame shortbread and dipped in white chocolate and black sesame oreo crumble. So much better for you than nicotine 😜.
I hope that these ideas can showcase to brands how cool It would be to see a national chain take big creative swings with culture and flavor combinations that are still just as American as ham and turkey 🇺🇸. I’d definitely go to this sandwich shop if it existed!! Maybe I should make this into a pop up??
✌️ Frankie
Frankie - I was/am not a smoker at all. You misunderstood. How can I explain? Daddy only smoked when he went to and from China for P&G business trips, over his career with P&G. I don't understand how you remember we smoked when you were young? A big misunderstanding.
So incredibly creative!! Love this so much