Skip to main content

Owner of new deli on Ellicott Street aims to be known as 'The Sub King of Batavia'

By Howard B. Owens

(Pictured are the Smiths, from left, Michelle, Alex, Tom and Matt.)

Tom Smith has a simple goal: To be known as -- "The Sub King of Batavia."

Smith, with help of his brother, Matt, and wife, Michelle, opened New York Subs and Deli at 234 Ellicott St., Batavia, on Friday.

It's a shop that Smith has been planning for 20 years.

He said he always felt he couldn't get a good sub outside of Rochester, and he thought, "I can do that, too."

"There's an art form to a good sandwich and I've mastered the art form," Smith said.

There's at least one convert in Batavia -- a local resident stopped into the shop this afternoon to report back that he and his wife were duly impressed with the subs they had just eaten for lunch.

"I'll definitely be back," the customer said.

Smith said he spent a lot of time traveling to Rochester, buying subs, bringing them home and deconstructing them -- measuring out every ingredient.

Besides getting the amount of ingredients right, the other secret to a great sub is fresh bread, meat, cheese and vegetables.

"I figured out what they were doing and how to make some improvements," Smith said.

Billie Owens

Making a topnotch sub is not a piece of cake. Like making a good burger or a cooking the perfect steak, it sounds easy to do, but the results can be wildly different. Fresh ingredients are a given, but like Tom says, the right of amount of ingredients and the way they are put together make a big difference.

During the course of my lifetime in various communities, I've had a few subs and some pretty good ones, too.

But some places put too much meat on a sub, as if a big wad of salami makes it better. Not. Other places couldn't get an order right if you repeated it 10 times using a bullhorn. Others take no care in the assemblage -- just slop it all on a roll and shove it in a bag. Others use condiments so sparingly they are almost undetectable. I'm definately going to give this deli a try.

Feb 12, 2012, 2:02pm Permalink
Bea McManis

Howard, since when are we allowed to use screen names instead of our real names. I have a fun list of screen names I can employ, but I thought there were rules.

Feb 13, 2012, 3:03pm Permalink

Authentically Local