Dear Mr. Subway

Dear Mr. Subway,

Even though it functions more as proof that God is dead, Hell is empty, and that the devils are all here, than it does as a tasty dessert, I have found myself compelled to try the war crime you euphemistically call your Footlong Oreo Cookie. I’m sorry, did I say try? This so-called cookie is less something you try, and more something you endure. 

I was, tragically, made aware of this, your most recent creation, in perhaps the most bloodless way possible: via a press release. This is, on its own, remarkable, because I don’t go out of my way to read press releases from sandwich slingers; I’m not sure why The Algorithm decided to throw your press release in my face, but it sure did, and that leads me to my first question about this product of yours, sir. In that release I was confronted with the following sentence: “Whether dunking, sharing or pairing with your favorite sub, Subway's latest Footlong Cookie captures the essence of OREO cookies, reimagined by the experts in all things footlong.”

In an imagined world in which I was a copywriter and wrote that sentence, the very next thing that I would do would be to close my laptop, walk out of my office to the nearest river, and throw myself off the tallest point of the bridge. My question, sir, is – was this product rollout more about a RIF than it was making a quality cookie? Were you targeting someone specific in your marketing department? Was there some reason you couldn’t fire someone on your copywriting team, and decided to drive them to suicide instead? 

Whatever your reason for making this abomination, I did take myself to my nearest Subway location, and as I walked in the door, I remembered why I haven’t had one of your sandwiches in at least fifteen years. One whiff of the hammy air and I remembered the exact feeling of the food poisoning I got from your establishments three times in a row. One glance at the wan, yellowed fluorescent lighting and I remembered that I never really liked your sandwiches that much anyway. One glance past the sandwich counter into the prep area filled with more disorganized, dirty boxes than the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark and I seriously considered whether I should call the OHA emergency number instead of ordering a sandwich and a cookie. Yes, I ordered a sandwich too, the inexplicably named “Home Run Ham” – I was there, and as they say, might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. 

Actually, sir, if you don’t mind a quick digression, can we talk about your sandwiches for a moment? In any other sandwich shop, I’d order an Italian hoagie without thinking, but as I stared into the abyss of your slightly flickering menu, you for some ungodly reason decided to call your version of that classic sub “The Italiano” and, just no, so instead, I opted for the ham and provolone, which you decided for some reason to name Kenny Rogers’ The Hambler or something. But the main reason I wanted to ask about this is – what sort of training regimen do you actually require to become a Sandwich Artisan? Once my sandwich was all put together, the teenager behind the counter asked me if I wanted any sauce or anything on it, and I said, “Uh, mayonnaise, I guess?” at which point he just absolutely drenched the vegetable portion of the sandwich with more mayo than I’ve ever put on a sandwich in my life, and then just sort of stirred the mayo into the veggies with his thanks-be-to-all-the-gods gloved fingers, and then rolled the whole thing up. It was one of the absolute strangest methods of sandwich assembly I’ve ever had the displeasure to witness, I can’t possibly imagine that it’s the standard at your network of sandwich dugouts, and it makes me wonder if you actually bother training your employees at all?

Anyway. After the pimply teen assembled my sandwich, he asked if there was anything else I wanted, and I have to tell you, sir, it was almost embarrassing to order a Foot Long Oreo. I think I might have actually ordered “the damn Foot Long Oreo,” but I’m not entirely sure. It was a low point in my life, and I am already trying to forget I did it. But I did the deed, and your Sandwich Artisan or whatever took one out of the fridge and stuck it in the toaster oven. When it was done, he looked at me and asked “Do you mind if I poke it with a knife, they don’t always cook all the way and I want to make sure it's done.” I of course assented, but as he stuck it repeatedly with a knife I had to wonder if he was actually checking to see if it was fully cooked, or if he was making sure it was dead. Then he slipped it into an inexplicably Christmas themed bag, handed it to me, and off I went.

The first thing I noticed about this Foot Long Oreo – you know what? I’m sick of typing it that out every time. I’m gonna call it something different. I’m gonna call it the Linear Oreo. You don’t mind, Mr. Subway, do you? Thanks, I appreciate that. Anyway, at this point I still haven’t looked at the Linear Oreo, so the first thing that I did actually notice about it is how incredibly heavy it is. The Linear Oreo was significantly heavier than my Touchdown Ham or whatever the sandwich was called, but it was also significantly smaller; this is an incredibly dense linear cookie. I won’t pretend that I thought this boded well for it. As I walked to my car, I gave the bag a quick smell. It smelled of chocolate, which was good, but there was something else, something hard to define, something sharp and harsh, in the aroma. It was chocolate, but… but it was off somehow. It’s what I imagine a brownie served by an airline would smell like. It had the same relation to the aroma of chocolate that cheap-ass instant coffee has to the smell of actual coffee. But then it got weird; I put the sandwich and the cookie in my car and drove home, and as I was driving the car started to smell like weird chocolate, but then the aroma changed to something rich in umami and a hint of garlic. The aroma of this weird and terrible cookie kept morphing over the very short drive home, but it always existed somewhere in the chocolate - umami - allium - acid constellation, which, I gotta say, is nowhere near as classic a constellation as Cassiopeia. 

Upon getting home, I faced a quandary: should I eat my sandwich first, or should I eat dessert first? Despite the possibility of ruining my appetite, there was a pair of unassailable facts before me: the cookie was warm, and the sandwich cold, and I obviously needed to try the cookie warm, as you intended. So I slipped the cookie out of its bag and finally my eyes could feast upon the glory of…

Mr. Subway, why in God’s name, did you release a cookie that looks like a used litterbox? Why did you release a cookie that looks like someone blew a snotrocket across a brownie? This is a cookie that looks like someone tried to ice an actual turd. This is perhaps the most disgusting looking dessert I’ve seen in years. I’ve eaten some objectionable things in my life, including actual Hákarl in Iceland, actual fermented shark, and that looked less terrible than this does. Most times when you look at food, you don’t think “if someone hit this with a hammer it might look better” but congratulations, sir, you’ve created a cookie that would look better pulverized.

Even the crumbled Oreos on top of the jizz-lookin’ vanilla creme or whatever it is that runs down the middle of the cookie look disgusting - instead of a nice white creme, they’ve got this greyish-tan icing that looks like it was used to clean an auto shop’s floor after a 1983 Buick Regal sprayed oil across it. Listen, I really don’t mean to harp on this, but this “cookie” looks terrible. How did this ever escape focus groups to inflict itself upon our reality? 

And then it got worse, because I decided the whole thing would disintegrate if I tried to pick it up from it’s cardboard cradle, so I took a fork and used the tines to cut a corner of the cookie off, and when I used the fork to lever out that morsel the creme stretched just slightly before snapping and rebounding, and in that moment this cookie became the absolute least appetizing looking thing I’ve ever experienced.

So how does it taste? I am itching, Mr. Subway, that’s how it tastes. It tastes awful, and it tastes like something that makes you itch. The creme has roughly the taste of marshmallow fluff, but not good marshmallow fluff, more like marshmallow fluff left out under the August sun. The cake does indeed have the consistency and flavor of brownies, but not good brownies. These brownies are salty and, yes, umami, as if anchovies were a critical ingredient, but also taste underbaked, sticky, and teeth-clinging. The brownie under the creme was even more objectionable than the rest of the cookie, because that part didn’t rise at all when it baked, and it's just a dense, soggy morass of the crappiest chocolate I’ve ever eaten. The chocolate reminds me of those waxy chocolates you got in your stockings in the 80s, when your parents were having a rough year. I wasn’t wrong in my initial thought, Mr. Subway – this does taste like a brownie designed by an airline, but then when you add in the marshmallow fluff and shards of Oreo on top it becomes more sinister. This is a brownie designed by an artificial intelligence smart enough to make fun of us. 

And, critically, and this is perhaps the biggest strike against it – this tastes nothing like an Oreo. It tastes so little like an Oreo that it makes the Oreo shards atop it not taste like Oreos. Whatever you have done here is so, just, lousy, that it has robbed the souls of the Oreos and have made them taste like something else. Hydrox, maybe. Or No Frills Chocolate Sandwich Cookies. 

Here’s the real thing, though, Mr. Subway - I can’t, for the life of me, figure out who this is supposed to appeal to. You’d think it would have been intended to appeal to kids – though I would’ve assumed you’d still be laying low on that front after the whole Jared fiasco – but between the saltiness and umami it really doesn’t seem like something a kid would like. I’d guess you were maybe trying to appeal to the stoners, but it was hard to eat more than a couple bites of this thing, it’s so dense, and the stoners I know seem to prefer things you can eat a lot of. You’re not trying to appeal to Oreo aficionados, because it honestly tastes nothing like an Oreo.

So in summary, you’ve made an honestly pretty bad product that no one asked for, that appeals to no one, and no one actually likes. And I think, in your heart of hearts, you knew that it was going to be a failure before it was even released, and that’s why it’s already marketed as “limited edition” – that way, when it silently disappears from your menu, maybe, just maybe, no one will notice that you’ve swept your failure of a footlong right under the rug.

Who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky this time.

Sincerely,

Alex Parise