Before there were Subways, there were miners, who pioneered some of America's best handheld meals. Underground laborers in Michigan's Upper Peninsula dined on pasties when they couldn't come up for lunch, and in West Virginia, Italian immigrants ate a similar sandwich cousin called a pepperoni roll.
In a New York Times story this week, John T. Edge pays homage to the pepperoni roll, which originated in West Virginia coal-mining towns in the early 1900s. When immigrants from Calabria arrived to work the mines, they brought fresh-baked bread and salumi for lunch. Soon, local stores started selling their version of the rollups, stuffing sticks of pepperoni into warm rolls. Now, pepperoni rolls are a local culinary legend. Writes Edge:
At BFS convenience stores, where they’re sold alongside Hot Pockets and other nationally distributed grab-and-go foods, shift workers warm pepperoni rolls in microwave ovens and dip them in packets of marinara sauce. At the Ritzy Lunch, a venerable diner in Clarksburg, grill cooks dress split rolls with chili and cheese. Country club barkeepers sell pepperoni rolls as ballast to beer-drinking golfers.
Pepperoni isn't my top choice when it comes to pizza, but that doughy crust looks like it would be right up my alley. Are you familiar with the pepperoni roll?
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