Sandwiched in paradise

Numerous texts were sent from here, in flagrant violation of H&S.

I know I'm supposed to be the office curmudgeon, but it's hard to be grumpy when you're sunning yourself by a pool with its own waterfall.

Yes, the Rapide team is visiting Las Vegas, and a frown doesn't fit with forty-degree heat and one of the best hotels in town. Which means I've got to do something that doesn't normally come hard to me: find something to be grumpy about. Oh yes... Subway.

No, not the underground railway thing (it runs above ground here in Vegas, anyway.) I'm talking sandwiches here. You know, those "subs, "half subs", the famous "footlongs". Subway does, about 60 varieties of bread and fillings that you'd think would be sandwich heaven... but aren't, in one very particular way. And the rest of the team were heading off for the steaks at Smith & Wollensky, where I couldn't find something to complain about if I worked all week at it.

So being me, I sloped away from the joints the rest of the crowd were visiting - and went for a sandwich in the nearest Subway.

You see, I enjoy a good sandwich, and Subway does plenty of them. The meatball marinara. The trusty BLT. The Cold Cut Combo, the Oven Roasted Chicken, and the cringingly-spelt Veggie Delite. (I feel better already.)

But there's one big problem: these sarnies FALL APART.

Yes, in the land of the supersized dashboard cupholder, the eight-lane boulevard and the 24-hr drive-through, Subway don't do a single sandwich you can eat at the wheel without a $200 cleaning bill.

The problem starts with the bread. It's a victim of its own freshness I don't know if the franchisees bake it on the premises, but it just comes apart in your hands. (If you're lucky enough to have hands. I sort of levitate it towards my mouth.) The Sandwich Biosphere is divided into One-Handed and Two-Handed sandwiches, and Subways are - beyond any doubt - Two-Handed Sandwiches.

And the bread problem's exacerbated by the fillings. A lot of them are "loose leaf", not "glued together" by the sauces (actually, Subway are a bit stingy with their sauces sometimes.) So once the bread's broken, scattering crumbs all over your rental Kia, the salad items are in hot pursuit. And those black olive slices are hell to pick up from a dark footwell, believe me.

This is America, land of the car? I mean, I could practically make out the Hertz and Avis representatives discreetly stationed outside the Subway branch, forever on alert for stray squirts of meatball sauce and ryebread crumbs on their Kias and Saturns.

Look, there's no shortage of reasons to like Subway. The 2009 Zagat Fast-Food Survey rated Subway the number one provider of "Healthy Options". In business terms, they're the Number 1 Franchise in America, which must mean plenty of people are spending their recession-depleted pay packets on footlongs. But a gripe's a gripe, and this is a major missed opportunity for the Subway bods.

That's why after a Subway when I'm on my way somewhere, I always feel slightly - y'know - dissatisfied somehow, as if something containing huge promise just didn't quite deliver. I'll be back at Subway again, no problem, but next time I'm leaving the rental car behind.