​The Ultimate Meatball Sub. Yes, that's the one with cheesy garlic bread.

(Vegetarians and carbs avoiders, look away now.)

Something caught my eye as I dashed along a city street on Friday evening. Was it a sparkly dress in the window of a boutique? A pair of designer shoes, or a newly opened restaurant? Nope, it was a cheesy garlic bread sandwich on a Subway poster.

Subway has introduced The Ultimate range to its branches in Australia. A choice of  subs built on cheesy garlic bread, or you can choose to have the cheesy garlic bread as an upgrade option on any sandwich. Only available for a limited time!

I went for The Ultimate Meatball Sub. I nearly ordered two, one to devour immediately and the other to take selfies with, but I forced myself to calm down. This isn’t a photogenic meal. These beasts get sloppy real quickly.

Actually I should have taken in progress shots as the sandwich artist was working his magic. Garlic butter slathered all along both sides of the sub, triple cheese, lashings of mozzarella and then into the toasting oven to melt it all down. 

I did get thrown off guard by still having the usual choices of bread as a base (I get really panicked by unexpected questions when I’m ordering a sandwich). I picked the standard white bread, although I reckon this sub would work really well with one of the brown bread varieties too. Did I have salad? Yes, just tomato, green capsicum and spinach leaves.

So what’s my verdict on this extravaganza of a sandwich? Well, The Ultimate Meatball Sub is exactly what you need when you’re craving something cheesy, garlicy, meaty and a little bit greasy. It’s like instead of going somewhere for a whole pizza plus garlic bread, you can go to Subway where all your needs will be met in just one sandwich. I can’t imagine it surviving a home delivery trip, so make this a treat for when you’re actually passing by to pick it up.

Was I highly satisfied at the end of my meal? Yes, definitely, yes.

Could you make something like it at home? Of course you could, but then you’d end up eating six of them in a week, and that might be a problem. 

As anyone who has ever tried to go out for breakfast, lunch or dinner with me has learnt, I am a very unsophisticated eater. 

Even when I go out for a normal pub meal I can still get it all wrong, especially if I’m with new people.  I usually order something that ends up being completely inappropriate, like burger and chips when everyone else has ordered something proper like a roast dinner, leading to the inevitable awkward “Oh heck, do I need to eat my chips with a fork? Do I need to politely cut this burger in half before trying to eat it? Why didn’t I just order a steak?!” moment.

When you take me out of the pub and into the wider world of dining, things just get worse…

Sometimes a food item, like so many other products in this world, is invented by a company and marketed so well that it becomes a part of everyday life and we soon forget that we ever lived without it.

Sometimes a trend starts, probably from a TV cooking show or a celebrity chef, for a food item that’s been there all along but no-one really took much notice of it.

Either way, before we know it, there’s a new dish or delicacy making headlines and enjoying its fifteen minutes of fame.

Here’s my top five Trendy Food Items: