Kelli says. “It’s a very distinctive grill
smell—and it doesn’t matter the meat:
I like venison, lamb, pork and chicken.”
As Larry Sharak said: It’s in the marinade. No one will share the secret recipe,
but I’ve tasted olive oil, vinegar and
oregano. If you try the marinade alone,
it’s a little like bottled Italian dressing.
May not seem that exotic to you, but to
Kelli—and legions of other food lovers
like her—it’s inspired.
We’re Talkin’ Sandwiches Here
People say the same of the Bobbie,
which is the most famous item on the
menu at Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop, a
growing chain that is based in Wilmington. The sandwich is named for the aunt
of the original sister-and-brother owners, Lois and Alan Margolet. As children, they used to wake up the morning
after Thanksgiving to find Aunt Bobbie
in the kitchen, making sandwiches with
the leftovers: turkey, stuffing, cranberry
and mayonnaise.
“You can’t fry
a crab bomb,
it’ll blow
apart.”
l
t
The Margolets opened their first
Capriotti’s—named after their grandfather, who loved to cook—in 1976 in the
Little Italy section of Wilmington. At
first, they planned to have the Bobbie on
the menu only around the holidays.
“They never were able to take it off
he menu,” says Ashley Morris, who
bought the company last year. “Because
every single day people would come in
and order the sandwich.”
Capriotti’s now has more than 60
ocations, but, as Morris told me, there’s
still not a shop close enough for a certain
man in northern Pennsylvania. He’d take
Walter’s has
been a family
mainstay for
generations.
f
orders for all his friends and family and,
once a month, make a four-and-a-half-hour trip to pick up the sandwiches.
“Eighty percent of them are the Bobbie,” says Morris.
He gets his friends’ orders, and adds
on a week’s worth of Bobbies for himself.
“I said to him, ‘That means you’re
eating a week-old sandwich in some
cases? Why would you do that?’ ” Morris
tells me. “And he says: ‘A five-day-old
Bobbie is better than any sandwich I can
buy anywhere else.’ ”
The key? Slow-roasted turkey, just like
you’d have for Thanksgiving. When the
Margolets first opened they started out
roasting one turkey a night. Soon enough,
it was up to a dozen.
Other delis have picked up on the
Bobbie over the years, but that doesn’t
bother Morris.
“For us, imitation is the most sincere
orm of flattery,” he says. It may be a turkey sub with stuffing and cranberry, but
“it’s never a Capriotti’s Bobbie. We roast
