The best thing I ate this week: Hoagie dip and a croissant loaf at Pub & Kitchen

It has long been my frustration that a great hoagie is nearly impossible to come by around tony Rittenhouse Square. That’s even more true since the recent closing of Totorice’s retail deli at 20th and Locust, due to the neighborhood’s high rent. (The deli still does Rittenhouse deliveries from its ghost kitchen). The hoagie as inspiration, however, is alive and well at Pub & Kitchen, where new chef Alex Schiff is making his mark with an appetizer that’s been a hit at the bar on Eagles game days: a Delco-style hoagie dip served with a hot loaf of...fresh baked croissant?

It’s hard to imagine a more bougie version of a hoagie-adjacent specialty than this. There’s even Chardonnay vinegar tossed with the shredded lettuce nest that hovers like a crunchy toupée atop the crock. But it’s nonetheless a brilliant pairing of high brow-low brow indulgence I haven’t been able to stop thinking about since I downed my first tub. The dish began with Schiff’s obsession with perfecting a croissant recipe, and then the repackaging of the intricately laminated dough as thick ribbons folded into a loaf pan that results in the most buttery pull-apart bread possible. It’s laminated and baked daily in an hours-long process that’s worth the effort because it showcases the many possibilities of croissant dough textures — crunchy and flaky around the edges, soft and pliant at the center of each ripped-off square — in a way I’ve never encountered.

The choice of hoagie dip for its accompaniment was the Wilmington native’s witty tribute to our regional sandwich passion. And Schiff nailed the flavor highlights of a proper hoagie, a mix of finely chopped soppressata, Genoa salami, Black Forest ham, aged provolone, onions, and tomato blended with a mayo-cream cheese base that smells like oregano and snaps with pickled peppers and the spicy tang of their brine. A smart attention to even the little details, like hand-ripped ribbons of prosciutto that help the dip cling to the crags of each swiped morsel of ripped croissant, make these two companions work together as couple of destiny, no matter how unlikely.

— Craig LaBan

Italian hoagie dip and croissant loaf, $18, Pub & Kitchen, 1946 Lombard St., 215-545-0350; thepubandkitchen.com