In the Best of Denver 2007, I touted Yo Philly, the sandwich shop inside a Conoco station run by Jerry Cheryl, and followed up a few weeks later with this warning: "If you haven't yet made the scene, you should. My only fear is that someday this gas-station counter will get so crowded (and with the amount of time per sandwich that Jerry averages, any more than five customers waiting at any one time could bring the entire operation to a standstill) that Jerry will have to hire on a sandwich apprentice, and that will ruin everything."
Well, guess what? While researching this year's Best of Denver, Laura and I made a run to Englewood for a bag of takeout hoagies, and though we were dreading (somewhat) the possibility that we would have to spend an hour standing at the counter while Jerry went off on some ill-considered jag about universal health care, the evils of liberal America and the art of slicing onions, what I should've been dreading more was that I wouldn't have to listen to the usual far-right screed that comes as a free side with every one of Jerry's sandwiches. Instead, what we got were hoagies made by precisely the kind of sandwich apprentice I'd predicted last year — a kid who did a very admirable job of putting together a cheesesteak, a ham-and-cheese hoagie and a fat Italian sub, but did so with none of the sandwich-savant magic that Jerry brings to the board.
These were perfectly serviceable sandwiches, loaded with meat and veggies, with razor-thin onions and chopped lettuce and that great sandwich oil that Jerry uses. But they were also very obviously copies of Jerry Cheryl's originals. So I got Jerry on the phone last week to see what was up, and he told me that yes, he had brought on a sandwich apprentice, and yes, the kid did run the counter now and then. But he also said that he was still in charge — still "gettin' it on," as he put it. So next time I head out to his place, I'll make sure he's the one getting it on behind the counter, and I'll willingly listen to his long lecture on fixing Social Security and storing tomatoes if it means I can leave with a bag of his brilliant sandwiches.
