single serving breakfast sandwich: merigan sub shop in soma (plus one)

Hmmm....she's blaming high food costs and the seasonality of baseball for closing. I live near ballpark and one of these days these restaurants will realize they have to cater to those of us that live here and not just rely on game day folks. Plus here sandwiches were expensive*

This isn't my first rodeo with Merigan Sub Shop. I hit the place a fair number of times during the first year it was open. While most of the subs were tasty, I just couldn't get past the pricing on some of the sandwiches. Much of that had to do with just the half sizes, which they have now done away with. You have to get a full or nothing which start at around $12 and go up from there. We all know how I feel about that and I just can't. It's too bad as they are real close to my abode and I really wanted to like them and have a new reasonable neighborhood place to chow down on occasion.

A couple years on now and they are still around as they do catering for area businesses (that's a nice write off!) and have seemed to appeal to the neighborhood techies who can most likely afford it without blinking too much as they are just used to it by now. But enough of my belly-aching. These days Merigan has added breakfast sandwiches to their oeuvre and since I'm on that kick now, figured I needed to try them.

These are not their standard full length sandwiches but kind of half size. Seriously, have a big 'ol sub for breakfast might be nice for a weightlifter, but even for me it's a little much. They have 5 choices from $6 to $7, surprisingly standard pricing for the area, thus I'm not experiencing any sticker shock. I decided to actually try 2 different ones on 2 different mornings and went with a $6.50 one then a $6 one. Let's see they got!

I went all in first time around with the arista morning sub at $6.50. Braised and roasted pork, fried egg, rapini, provolone and hots if you are into them, though I decided to skip them this early in the morning. Everything is made to order so it does take a few minutes to get. But what you get is a pretty decent sized sandwich loaded with fixings. While I'm not the biggest fan of lemongrass as a seasoning, can get cloying, the pork was still tender and juicy and piled on. The egg was just a tad runny adding richness to blend and compliment the moderate bitterness of the rapini. You can even taste some buttery sharpness from the provolone. Bonus, the bread, from Pinkie's, is toasted and buttered. We know I'm all about the butter! In short, a filling and tasty sandwich to start your morning or send you back to a nap, it all depends on your metabolism.

The egg parm sub at $6 is pretty self explanatory. Fried egg, fresh mozzarella, provolone, marinara and basil. An outside shot of the sandwich was a little boring so above is the inside and what you get. Honestly, I was a little underwhelmed. It's basically egg, cheese and tomato sauce on bread. Didn't seem all that inspiring or interesting when you consider all the stuff you get on the one above for just $1 more. Marinara was on the sweet side for me and that one leaf of basil really wasn't cutting it. Plus the egg, as you can see, was a little over done. More scramble fried than actual all white with a yellow center fried. I'm sure these are like cage free eggs and the mozzarella is probably hand thrown or something, but price and quality just didn't match up for me on this one.

One out of two, that's a split vote but I'd still give the breakfast sandwich options here a thumbs up. Outside of the plain old egg and cheese, their other choices come with the Italian meats too and still remain under that elusive $7 threshold for a breakfast sandwich that doesn't make my wallet shudder. While I'm still not sold on their full size and priced later day choices, I can see crawling my lazy bum out of bed early enough to grab one of the brekkies before work. They only serve them up till 10am, so I'm sure most of you will be able to make it by then.