Place: Albertsons
Items: Club and Italian subs
Price: $4.99

On this lunch quest, we cut out the middle man: the restaurant. Good lunch is about good food, ergo we went straight to the food's source: the supermarket. Our office happens to be next to a giant Albertsons, but even if one of those 2,300 stores isn't close to you, check out the deli at your local grocer. The fresh-made submarine sandwich could rival the restaurant big boys. Pick up the latest National Enquirer in the checkout aisle, and
you've got yourself 60 minutes of meaty, freaky bliss.

Tom: Paper or plastic? Who cares. The real question at the supermarket should be “mustard or mayonnaise?” Albertsons has an exact replica of my Subway choice—the Club. This version is much meatier and better in the way a gourmet hamburger is better than McDonald's. Not always preferable, but undeniably better. Key to the Albertsons sub's quality are the top-notch ingredients. The bread is more of a real sub roll than a hotdog bun. More important, the ham, turkey and roast beef are

the chain was just a corner sandwich shop. The fresh, chewy roll hosts meat slices thicker than the see-through wafers at today's Subway. But I still am able to get the same salad's worth of toppings when I order it with “everything.”
With all that going for the grocery store, it's missing one thing: a place to sit. Rather than hunker down in the tiny corner of tables, I'll skitter back to my desk to eat.

Tom: Chris, there's no doubt that sooner or later we will all just be living inside our local grocery store with its many conveniences. Loft apartments with a view of the produce section are a few years away. I'm not eager for Albertsons' version of utopia. But at least you'll walk out your door and get a great sandwich.  

Chris: I ain't never living in an Albertsons, Tom  (unless I have a rent coupon for $500 off). And I probably won't eat there, either. Albertsons at noon on a Tuesday just doesn't feel like a lunch place. I want to munch my sub alongside my kind of people: the cubiclists savoring every morsel of their BMTs.

Rating: 3 sporks (out of 5).

E-mail The Lunch Guys:
tomandchris@thelunchguys.com

cut from the same Thumann's high-end deli meat you buy for $7.99 a pound to take home. Plus, I like that they heap on the meat. A 6-inch sub was plenty for lunch without lots of condiments.
Quality aside, I still struggle with the concept. On one hand, why shouldn't Albertsons make and sell subs? They have all the ingredients. It would be like Home Depot selling houses. Yet on the other hand, we need to get out more.

Chris: The real beauty of supermarket lunching is squeezing the most out of my lunch hour. I can drop off my dry cleaning, get my photos developed, buy a birthday card for me mum and cash in my coin jar — and then pick up a quality sandwich. At Albertsons, I don't give up anything in quality for the sake of convenience. The deli is surprisingly comparable to Subway, if not better. My Italian sub, with ham and genoa, reminds me of what the original  Su bway  BMT  must  have been like when