Four Things I Learned Eating the DiAnoia’s Italian Hoagie

Hi there. I know this website is primarily about pizza, but sometime in order to talk about pizza you need to talk about their cousin, the hoagie.

A good hoagie can accompany any pizza into battle. Often times they are the unsung hero of the pizza evening. A greasy hoagie tags along to a Friday night pizza party as hunger insurance. It’s the extra $8-$11 you pay to ensure everyone gets enough to eat, because you have to feed an amount of people between one large pizza and two large pizzas.

I lust after hoagies. There is hardly anything more satisfying than biting into a fresh Italian hoagie with juices exploding with every bite and four kinds of meat (that are just slightly different from one another) coming together to form the main event. When I am trying out a pizza place I am also testing them for their hoagies.

I’m only saying all this to convince you that I am as into hoagies as I am into pizza. And this hoagie I devoured at DiAnoia’s is a transcendent experience that I had to communicate.

Hoagie Recon

Research and reconnaissance are key attributes of a successful hoagie excursion. When I started this journey I didn’t know the hoagie I would devour would be from DiAnoia’s in the Strip District.

But I knew what I wanted. Something soggy, warm, and comforting. Meats did not need to be stacked to the highest heights, but they had to be present. Bonus points for catering to my current lust for unique spreads on bread. I dug deep through my catalogue of pizzerias and carefully weighed each and every option.

Knowing what you want out of a hoagie is important to having a divine hoagie experience. If your gut and your brain aren’t aligned on expectations your hoagie experience will be a letdown. Because I took the time to do my research and outline my hoagie criteria I had a trancendendant time with the hoagie you see pictured above.

For example, I love the Spak Brother’s Italian hoagie. But I wanted something that would stain my hands with grease and oil. Something that would disrupt my entire being.

Carving Out Hoagie Time

Once you know what hoagie you’ll be chomping on, it’s just as important to carve out a time and space to savor the hoagie. In this specific scenario I had eight inches of hoagie to account for. Depending on your hoagie preference you could have anywhere from six to eighteen inches to accommodate. Ensure you have enough time to eat this hoagie in a relaxing environment.

Instead of heading to the privacy of my home to chow down on this Italian delight sent from the heavens, I opted to commune with the natural elements. It was a Friday so I took a half day from work, giving me ample time to savor the hoagie. The PTO system is built exactly for this kind of event - time off does not get more personal than this.

On this Friday afternoon I took my family to West Park in the North Side. We would collect our hoagies then dine al fresco, surrounded by nature and a number of baby geese. It was what the hoagie wanted for its final day on earth.

After all, it’s not only about you. This is a living wake for the hoagie itself. Pick a venue that is mutually respectfully to both parties.

Pairing the Hoagie

What you add alongside your hoagie can change the situation greatly. Will you be pairing it with an ice cold beer? A cup of ice cold water? And ice cold cocktail? Maybe even an ice cold soda pop? If you haven’t noticed the trend let me spell it out for you - you need to have something ice cold with your hoagie.

Ice cold anything pairs will with a hoagie because you are going to be battling a river of grease and spice. Ideally, a good Italian hoagie will have some peppers on board for the ride. The near-frozen beverage will tame rogue spiciness and keep you in the drivers seat.

As an added bonus, having a nice beverage in hand will help ease digestion. That is to say, it speeds up the process of your intestines absorbing every little nutrient and molecule of the hoagie. This is important because you want to get that hoagie in your system ASAP. There is magic that happens when you meet your hoagie soulmate so haste is the order of the day.

On the pairing front, you’ll also want to think about the company around you. For me, I chose to eat this hoagie with my wife and 5 month old daughter. I figured that it was never too early to teach her the way of the hoagie. She seemed delighted and cooed the whole time.

I paired my hoagie with an ice cold aperol spritz and I’m tempted to say this is a combination you can’t afford to miss.

Post-Hoagie Life

This is where things take a turn for the “weird” and “unusual.” As you know I am not a man of hyperbole. As a pizza journalist my promise to you is to present only the facts then let you be the judge.

That is just what I’ll do here. I’ll present the facts to you, my dear reader, and you can crunch the numbers to figure out if this is a hoagie miracle or simple a placebo effect.

I devoured the hoagie on Friday, around 2pm EST. We were in West Park, the sun was shining and by all accounts it was paradise.

Life seemed normal after that event. I spent the rest of the day tending to my daughter (changing diapers, playing the “Hoagie Game”, and other things), and living life to its fullest.

The next morning I woke up promptly at 6am EST to go for a run. I’m an avid runner so this part isn’t unique. But that morning was intriguing. The city was infested with fog. Not a single ray of sun could penetrate this fog and the city stayed grey until 10 am EST. Color simply didn’t exist.

Running across one of the many bridges during this phenomenon is perplexing. You can’t see more than a few feet ahead of you and there’s zero visibility on the bridge. You know that you’re fifty feet above river level, but you feel grounded. Immediate danger lingers on the other side of the railing, but the fog hides any threat. It’s grey, comforting and deceptive.

This run was a strange one. But even stranger my legs and breathing felt immaculate. I intended to go a mere eight miles and save my legs for the classic long Sunday run. But something stirred within.

Along my route I came to a split path. Something outside of a Robert Frost poem. To my left was a smooth, flat, course that would loop me back to my home with a run around eight miles. To my right was a road I’ve traveled before, but it’s a struggle. It’s two miles of uphill through a park followed by an excruciatingly long downhill that destroys the quads. It’s a brutal route that chews up runners.

I fully intended to go left and take the easy way home. But something inside me, which in hindsight can only be the Italian Hoagie, spurred me to turn right. So I did. I went right.

And that brutal climb felt like a god flattened the hill. It felt like nothing. A mere mole hill. I effortlessly floated up the incline waving to walkers taking their time coming down.

At the top of the hill I felt like I was only starting my run. And the downhill was just as easy. In total I ran 15.5 miles that day. Nearly twice what I expected to run.

I attribute this successful run to the hoagie itself. A true miracle.

Let this be a lesson to you - an Italian hoagie is more than the sums of its part. It’s a device engineered to provide you with the necessary nutrients you need to survive and grow. It neatly compacts the entire food pyramid into a simple, edible device.