The Greatest Sandwich Ever Created: the Chicken Finger Supreme Hoagie
Sometimes I miss this sandwich so much it hurts.
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I took a year off between high school and college. I didn’t originally plan on taking a gap year; it happened because I was an idiot. But sometimes things work out for the best, even when they start in a place of stupidity. Which is good for me, because I’m very stupid.
It started because I had no real plans for my future, so I applied to one school and one school only: Penn State, and was accepted into their Engineering Department. I clapped my hands, wiped them on my pants, and figured that was that. Engineering was a respectable profession, and Penn State had a good Engineering program. Did I actually want to be an Engineer? How the hell did I know? I was a child at the time. What I did know was that it sounded good to tell people, “I’m going to Penn State and I’m going to be an Engineer.”
But then I had to take calculus in high school, and I could not understand what the fuck was going on. It was the first time I was stumped by something at school. It actually (and I’m aware this sounds really bad) taught me a lesson in empathy because I used to look at kids who were bad at school and think “what is wrong with you, this shit is so easy.” School had always been a breeze. It was a breeze afterward as well. I just could not, for the life of me, understand calculus. I tried, for about half the year, and then I gave up. I didn’t care anymore, I threw in the towel. The timing of my tap-out led to a hilarious exchange in which my calculus teacher (a man I very much like) accused me in front of the entire class of quitting on math because he believed I thought I was “too cool after my performance in the school play.” This is an accusation I can all but guarantee has never been thrown at anyone before or after this day. Sorry, Mr. Maines, I didn’t think I was “too cool” because of my turn as Sir Harry in Once Upon a Mattress; I just sucked at calculus and decided to lean into the Senioritis. I figured I’d also need to find a new plan for college because I didn’t think you could be an Engineer if you didn’t understand calculus.1 But Penn State was a huge school with a lot of options, so I figured I’d find out what I wanted to do when I got there.
Then I actually got there, and it sucked. Look, maybe you went to Penn State and you loved it. Great for you. I did not. For those of you who don’t know, Penn State is a huge college town surrounded by a bunch of farm land and a whole lot of nothing much else. That’s great for some people, but it reminded me too much of my hometown. A place full of people who loved the football team and drinking and…I don’t even know what else. Should I have maybe visited the school one time before deciding to go there? Would that have clued me into the fact that maybe it wasn’t my cup of tea? Yeah, probably, but like I said, I’m very stupid.
So I went home, where my best friend from high school was waiting, because he also got to the college he planned on attending, looked around, said “nope,” and went back home.2 I get that going home to get away from a place I didn’t like because it reminded me of home seemes a bit strange. But again, I am very stupid.
Which all led to one of the greatest, most fun, dumbest (in the best way) years of my entire life. I won’t go into all the details, but it was a much-needed break for me to figure some stuff out. I was always just concerned about being “good at school” and never really thought about where that would lead or what I actually wanted. Finding out that Penn State was not the place for me and that I didn’t have to stick around in something that wasn’t right for me was big in my development into an adult. Even though it basically led to a year of fucking around and hanging out with my friends.
My mom was concerned, at first. There was a lot of talk about “wasting my potential” or whatever parents say to their kids in situations like this. But then I visited Temple in Philly3, and found the school that felt right for me. She knew I didn’t plan on staying home forever and working at the mall, where I got a job in an Antique store for the year.4 After that things were pretty chill at home, and I didn’t feel bad about fucking off with my friends when I wasn’t at work. I had a plan for the future, and could lean into just enjoying the now.5
So what the hell does any of this have to do with a sandwich?
Well, like I said, much of that year was spent hanging out with my best friend from high school, and a handful of other friends who all went to college near home (or were still in high school.) Many of them lived at home and commuted to school. Others went to Bloomsburg University, a school that, even at her most concerned about my future, my mother forbade me to apply to because it was so close to home it was basically the same as never leaving at all. There was a rumor at our high school that there was some kind of deal with Bloom that if you graduated, you automatically got accepted. It was a real “13th grade” kind of place and I’m glad my mom wouldn’t let me go there, even as a placeholder school for a semester or two.
So we hung out at Bloom, or at one of my friends’ places, and ultimately ended up ordering a lot of food. Like, a ton of food. In both frequency and in volume, it was stupid amounts of food. One of our go-to spots was a place called Crawford’s Bullpen, a place that, until that year, I knew as a small food stand and convenience store near the Little League baseball field where you could grab sunflower seeds, or Big League Chew, or shredded beef jerky in a tin made to look like it was a pack of Skoal. Basically, anything for ball-playing kids to emulate the tobacco-chewing Major League Baseball icons of our youth, and chomp on and spit out these gateway snacks to mouth cancer.
They also had delicious pizza and soft pretzels that were unlike any other pretzels or pizza I’ve ever had. It’s been over 20 years since I’ve eaten them, so I apologize for not knowing how exactly to describe them. The pretzels were close to an Amish-style soft pretzel. They were very light in color, crispy on the outside, soft and bready on the inside, a little bit buttery, and super salty. Not as soaked in butter and golden-brown as an Auntie Anne’s (or Wetzel’s) pretzel, but closer to that than a Philly-style soft pretzel. A search for “Amish soft pretzels” brought me a lot of close-but-no-cigar results, the closest in looks coming from this random Instagram reel (which seems to go really hard on the butter - these pretzels did not seem that buttery.)
The pizza was something they called “Pinky’s style,” which, I think, just meant the sauce was on top of the cheese. The sauce was super deep and rich in flavor, like it used a lot of tomato paste, or was cooked down for a long time, which usually isn’t great for pizza, but it paired perfectly with the creamy cheese blend they used. The crust was thicker and more bready than your typical New York pizza slice, and might have been something close to the pretzel dough, but I’m not sure. There were certainly better options in town for a “classic” pizza, but there was something special about Crawford’s pizza that kept us coming back.
But what really kept us coming back was the Chicken Finger Supreme Hoagie.6 A simple, but unforgettable sandwich consisting of chicken fingers on a hoagie roll with the most delicious secret sauce. This sauce, like the pretzels and pizza, was some kind of custom hybrid recipe that I’ve never experienced anywhere else. What was the sauce? If I knew, I’d probably be dead because I would make it and eat nothing but homemade, bootleg chicken finger supreme hoagies every day until I passed away from happiness7. It was tangy, and sweet, and zippy, and if I had to guess, it was probably equal parts honey mustard and buffalo sauce. I’m just putting that together now, today, 20 years later as I write this. This guy Crawford probably just mixed honey mustard and buffalo sauce (and maybe some BBQ sauce too?) and slapped it on a sandwich, and I’ve been chasing it like it’s the holy grail ever since.
We’d typically order from Crawford’s on Sundays, after playing what we called “Arena Football” all day long. My friends and I were more into basketball than football, but in the winter, we’d play touch football on shoveled-off basketball courts with a few special twists to the rules.8 After the weekly games, we’d head back to my best friend’s house, where we’d order more food than you’d ever believe, and eat until we passed out. We were a handful of 19 to 20-year-old guys, stinking to high hell from playing football all day, bellies full of chicken fingers and pizza and fries and wings and who knows what else, faces full of sauce, passed out on couches and floors while NASCAR played on TV. I’ve never been a NASCAR fan, but it ranks up there with baseball and golf for having on the TV while you’re deep in a Sunday afternoon nap.
The sandwich no longer exists, and I still remember the call to The Bullpen (no longer Crawford’s Bullpen) where I tried to order the Chicken Finger Supreme Hoagie and the person who answered the phone had no idea what the fuck I was talking about. They asked me to explain the hoagie, and told me the establishment recently came under new ownership. I just hung up the phone, defeated, not knowing how to properly explain the magic that had been removed from my life forever. I guess it’s true when they say you can’t go home again. A friend of mine, who was related to Mr. Crawford, later told me that he had a stock supply of the special sauce in his refrigerator and I have never before or after as seriously considered a home invasion and robbery as I did in that moment.
When people9 get all philosophical and sentimental about food, they like to talk about how it connects us to our past, reminds us of simpler times in our youth, or comforts us by reminding us of home. The memory of the Chicken Finger Supreme Hoagie connects me to this very special, very strange time in my life where I floated around with friends, had almost no responsibility whatsoever, and strenghtened bonds of friendship that last to this day. When I say I miss that sandwich so much it hurts what I really mean is I miss those times with those people and cherish the dumbass shit we did together.
Sure, some people use their gap year to backpack through Europe and see the world, I chose to stay in the Coal Region of Central Pennsylvania and fuck around like a high school kid who didn’t have to care about school, or much of anything at all, for a whole entire year. Would riding trains from city to city, reading the classics, and visiting museums and culturally and histoically important places have been more intelluctually stimulating? Probably, but that’s not what I needed at that point in my life. I needed to shake off the stink of feeling stupid because I didn’t understand calculus, and realize that it didn’t matter. I needed to figure out who I was outside of school. I needed to take a fake football league way too seriously. I needed to watch Super Troopers approximately 279 times. I needed fried chicken on a hoagie roll with a secret sauce that was probably just a bunch of other sauces mixed together, and my best friends from home.
I didn’t know if this was actually true. I still don’t know if it’s actually true. Maybe I could have been an Engineer.
Obviously, knowing he did this made it much easier for me to pull the plug on Penn State.
Thank you so much to the multiple friends from my high school graduating class who each reached out to me and said “I heard you left Penn State, come check out Temple, we think you’ll love it.”
Something that never really entered my mind, but I can totally see why it would have been a concern for her. Working in an antique store at the mall was rad though. It was quiet. I helped people move heavy furniture about once or twice per day, but mostly just sat at the register and read books.
Imagine the concept!
Finally, Aaron. Holy shit, it took you long enough to get here.
That’s the official cause of death when you die by gluttony, right?
For example, if you threw it into the hoop on a kickoff, the game was over, your team won. This was referred to as “A Gamer.” I think we also played games basketball-style, where the first to score X-number of TDs won, but you had to win by 2. So you had to get a stop and score, or if the game was tied, it went into a college football-style overtime. You were also allowed to set picks on passing routes, which is where I, a big man who did not run fast, thrived. It was a lot of fun, and we took it very seriously. There was a website where we posted player stats and bios. There was a system for giving out seasonal awards that was partly based on league-wide voting and partly based on a statistical formula created by the league’s “commissioner.” The league had a commissioner. The season kicked off on Thanksgiving weekend and ran through spring, capping off with the Arena Bowl championship tournament.
Or the movie Ratatouille
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