Gritty and Mayor Kenney at odds over best Italian Hoagie in Philly

For those who haven’t cast their votes in The Inquirer’s Italian hoagie bracket, mark your calendars. There’s less than a week left.

The interactive bracket to declare the best Italian hoagie in Philadelphia ends April 4, and while we tally up the 8,000-plus votes, it felt as good an opportunity as ever to share how some Philly notables made their picks.

The bracket asks readers to weigh in on 16 hoagie spots in Philadelphia, broken down by region and seeded by the spots’ Google ratings. The Inquirer rounded up brackets from Mayor Kenney; Philadelphia Flyers mascot Gritty, host of WHYY’s Check, Please! Kae Lani Palmisano; food artist and illustrator Hawk Krall; and Inquirer food critic Craig LaBan.

Here’s how they voted.

Was it any surprise that Mayor Kenney, born and bred South Philadelphian, would choose Lil’ Nick’s Deli? The final vote came down to the spot near 13th and Shunk Streets and Angelo’s at Ninth and Fitzwater Streets. In what could have been a campaign slogan for his reelection in 2019, he declared: “An Italian hoagie is the only real hoagie; never with mayo.”

Having had “more than 11, less than 2,300″ hoagies throughout his lifetime, the Flyers mascot told The Inquirer that “nobody will ever make a hoagie for Gritty better than Gritty makes a hoagie for Gritty.” The fan favorite made a mockery of the bracket, adding Wawa and an Ikea Italian meatball sandwich as unsolicited options. Gritty settled on a “homemade” Italian hoagie as his top pick, adding: “for me, an Italian hoagie is digestive poetry.”

LaBan, of course, took this very seriously — he revisited all 16 shops to ensure he could give an honest and accurate bracket. He said the South South division “easily could have been [his] Final Four.” But, his winner came from a street slightly north of South South: On S. 9th Street in the heart of the Italian Market. After tasting Angelo’s again, he wrote, “Whoa … that fresh-baked roll! Those oregano onions! Add some tangy hot peppers for hoagie lift-off!”

Palmisano knows her hoagies, having had more than 3,000 in her life — more than Gritty. “The perfect hoagie is one that is crafted intentionally,” she wrote. Her winner, Liberty Kitchen, won for ingredient arrangement, featuring “360 degrees of meat.”

She also offered advice to anyone looking to find a quality hoagie: “Delis make the best hoagies. Think about it. If they’re also selling freshly sliced deli meats, cheeses, and pantry essentials, then you know they’re stocking the best stuff.”

Krall is lucky because he regularly eats hoagies for work (in order to draw or write about them). He prefers tons of shredded lettuce and stood by his South Philly go-to: Pastificio. “They are just SO CONSISTENT,” he writes, having gone to the shop for nearly two decades. “Also I love the option to add their homemade fresh mozz to anything and everything.”

He also noted that other shops (Marinucci’s, Antonio’s, and Jack’s Place) would have made it far in the bracket, proving Philly has a plethora of prime Italian hoagies.

Disagree with any of these brackets? Fill out your own here.