6 Chain Club Sub Sandwiches, Ranked Worst To Best

I grew up blocks away from an Italian deli with a lengthy menu of hot and cold sandwiches that, from a very young age, set the standard for my cold-cut expectations. One of my favorites, which was often stored ready-to-go in glass refrigerators, was the club sub: a crusty, mayo-laced, meat-heavy sandwich that always seemed to have the crispiest lettuce and freshest tomatoes. It was the perfect sub sandwich for beachy summer days and a welcome reprieve from heavy wintery foods, and to this day, remains one of my favorite types of sub sandwiches.

The club sub is based on the classic toasted sandwich, rumored to have first been served in exclusive clubs, but simply housed on a submarine roll instead of toasted white bread. Though it doesn't require the third layer of bread, it is otherwise built the same way: sliced chicken or turkey (or both), crispy bacon, sliced tomato, shredded lettuce, and a generous layer of mayo. What makes a good club sub is the harmony of these simple ingredients, the quality of the bread, and the overall value of everything combined. When I set out to taste and rank club subs from six different national chains, I looked for subs stacked high with sliced meat, layered with flavorful bacon, and slathered with enough mayo to moisten the bread without drowning it. To my surprise, not many subs could pass what I believed to be a simple test, and only a few came out on top as near-perfect clubs.

As someone who has recently ranked Jimmy John's very high for having one of the best roast beef subs, I was shocked to find myself sinking the brand's club sub so deeply to last place. I believed the brand to be decent, if not good, at cold deli sandwiches, the uniquely airy, crunchy bread an asset to the cold-cuts in between. This time around, I almost immediately ranked it last just by sight alone — the bread is curled up and over-toasted, even feeling a little stale. The contents within are just barely enough to justify the price, and they appear scant compared to hefty Jersey Mike's — or even piled-high Subway.

Could it be a fluke? A bad batch of bread, or even a new employee on the line? It's possible, and to give it a fair chance, I looked beyond the bread and judged the contents within. The bacon is one of the most flavorful of the bunch, and the mayo, like on other sandwiches at Jimmy John's, is perfectly slathered and deliciously creamy. The deli meat is where it seems to go wrong: Just a slice or maybe two, shoved behind so much lettuce I can hardly see it. A lettuce-heavy sandwich with barely any deli meat and over-toasted bread is hard to rank highly, and so this time, Jimmy John's falls to last place.

Even more mystifying than Jimmy John's ranking is Potbelly's, which is usually my favorite sub shop and for which I am admittedly a little biased. Potbelly's always has perfectly toasted bread moistened by flavorful dressings or mayo, fresh vegetable toppings, and plenty of high-quality meats, but the brand's club sub is an unlikely departure. That's not to say it isn't a good sandwich — but it isn't a traditional club sub, which is what makes it so hard to rank.

There are rules to these rankings (however self-prescribed), and to be fair across all brands, I have to follow them. For a club sub ranking, I order each menu's named club sub and its written or suggested toppings. For Potbelly's, this means grilled chicken — not deli sliced — bacon, cheddar, and a suggested topping of BBQ sauce. I skipped the BBQ sauce, intending to give the sandwich a fair chance, but it still wasn't enough: The sandwich simply doesn't taste like a club. For a better comparison, I'd recommend ordering my favorite sandwich, The Wreck, which is closer to what I'd expect of a club sub. As for the grilled chicken sub? It's good, balanced, and admittedly better than Jimmy John's, so I ranked it just a hair above.

The 4th ranking in a list of 6 is generally a spot reserved for items that are just below good — decent, but not quite good enough to be part of the top 3. That's exactly what Penn Station delivers with the club sub, which is a technically better sandwich than the Jimmy John's and Potbelly's versions, but not a top-tier choice compared to the brands above it. This sub has everything it should and a few things it shouldn't — while it has the sliced turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and mayo, it also adds honey mustard and ham, giving the sandwich a uniquely sweet flavor. It's interesting, but doesn't quite feel like a club sub, and I'd offer that it's because of the sweet additions.

It could also be the bread, which, try as I might to look past it, is what always seems to bring my rating of Penn Station down. The bread is a thick, dense, chewy white bread that tastes a bit like an underbaked baguette, with a mild flavor that fails to add much to the sandwiches. While the sandwich itself, sweet in flavor and otherwise straightforward, is not bad, it just isn't the club sub I'd seek out when a craving hits, especially with other options available.

Subway has two club subs on its menu: The Subway Club and the All-American. Not realizing that there were two before ordering, I bought and ranked the Subway Club, keeping in mind that the brand offers a slightly different second version. The difference is slight — the All-American Club is made up of black forest ham, turkey, bacon, and white American cheese, while the Subway Club swaps the bacon for roast beef. The builds are otherwise the same, and the suggested toppings for both are lettuce, tomato, onion, and mayonnaise. Both are easy cold cuts that follow the architecture of a classic club, so ranking them becomes strictly about quality and taste.

If you've followed my other sub rankings, you know I have a hard time with modern Subway. The bread, meats, and even veggies seem to have suffered a decline in quality since the days of my childhood, and I've struggled to rank most Subway sandwiches any higher than last place. With that in mind, I was pleasantly surprised by this sandwich: Not only is it filled with a hefty amount of meat, but the veggies are crisp and fresh, and the addition of the onion is a welcome flavor boost that adds to the classic flavor of the sandwich. It pales in comparison to the mastery of Firehouse and Jersey Mike's, but holds up fine as a sandwich worth having (and getting again). While I'd change the recommended cheese — the American was overwhelming — the sub tastes exactly as it should, and even tastes good the next day, making it my third choice of club sub.

The Firehouse Club on a Sub is built similarly to Penn Station's club, consisting of sliced turkey, honey ham, bacon, Monterey Jack, lettuce, tomato, onion, mayo, and deli mustard. The swap from honey mustard to deli mustard makes a difference in how sweet the sandwich is (I prefer the tang of deli mustard), and the addition of onion adds a layer of flavor that, like Subway's version, complements the sandwich well. I am also partial to Monterey Jack for being mild and melty, adding depth to the sandwich without overpowering it. What may be most important, though, is the Firehouse bread, which time and again wins its high rankings among other sandwiches.

At most chains, subs are toasted before being topped with fresh toppings like lettuce and tomato, but Firehouse does things a little differently: the bread, meat, and cheese are assembled and added to a steamer box, which then steams the sub from below. This softens the bread instead of toasting it, resulting in the moist texture that Firehouse is known for. This has mixed results depending on the type of sub, but for the club, it's a success – the meats meld together with the cheese just enough to create a unified flavor, but not too much that it becomes soggy or warm. The sub is still a cold-cut, packable sub, just with a perfectly softened bready exterior. It's close to perfect, but one sub does it just a little bit better.

This is far and away the best club sub on the list, so much so that it sets the standard for what a club sub should be. It has everything you'd expect in a club sub and is well worth the price with a stuffed-to-the-brim build. Plenty of sliced meat, fresh vegetables, an inoffensive amount of mayo — although it did soak through the bread — and a firm but tender hoagie roll. This is as classic as it gets and has a taste to match, without compromising any of its value.

What makes Jersey Mike's club sub great is what makes any club sub great: a hefty stack of sliced meats, crispy smoked bacon, mild and cheesy provolone, crisp shredded lettuce, juicy tomatoes, and plenty of mayo. While the mayo soaks through Jersey Mike's soft bread, it didn't hurt the sandwich enough to rank it any lower. The soft, mayo-soaked bread was still far better than the crusty, over-toasted bread on Jimmy John's or the dense, doughy roll of Penn Station, and perhaps only a result of the sandwich sitting too long (and being stuffed a little too much, not complaining). With by far the best medley of flavors, the most classic build, and the best value, Jersey Mike's is easily the best option for a club sub and ranks handily at number one.

For this ranking, I chose restaurants that are considered national brands and have club subs listed clearly on their menus — the brands couldn't be local delis, and the sandwiches had to be considered a club by the restaurant in order to be taken into consideration. From there, I took note of what each of the subs was composed of and compared it to what I consider a classic club sandwich build, based on the triple-decker sandwich said to have been invented in early 1880's social clubs: deli-sliced chicken or turkey, bacon, sliced cheese, lettuce, tomato, and mayo. If the sandwich was offered toasted or steamed, I chose to heat it, considering that club sandwiches should be a unique mixture of hot and cold. When tasting, I considered the quality of the ingredients, whether the sandwich was completely cold, toasted, or steamed, how well the bread complemented the ingredients within, and whether the overall flavor was true to a club sandwich. To rank, I ranked higher the subs that strongly conveyed the classic, deli-style club flavor, and ranked lower the subs that seemed to miss the mark.