The Hot Bobbie

In 1976, in a small shop on Union Street in Wilmington, Delaware, Lois Margolet took her family's Thanksgiving tradition and stuffed it into a submarine roll. She named it after her aunt Bobbie, and the world of sandwiches was never quite the same. The Bobbie has since been called the greatest sandwich in America by more than one serious publication. They are not wrong.

What makes the Bobbie transcendent is the combination of textures and temperatures. You have the yielding softness of slow-roasted turkey, the substantial chew of bread stuffing moistened by the bird's own juices, the bright acidity of cranberry cutting through the richness, and good mayonnaise binding everything into a cohesive whole. When you toast it, the bread develops a shattering crust while the interior becomes a unified, steaming mass of Thanksgiving flavor.

This is not a sandwich you throw together carelessly. Each component matters. The turkey must be roasted properly, not that processed deli nonsense sliced from a tube. The stuffing should be bread-based and savory, not the sweet cornbread variety. The cranberry sauce wants some tartness to balance the fat. And the roll must be sturdy enough to contain the abundance without dissolving into mush.

I've made hundreds of these in the days following Thanksgiving, when the refrigerator groans with leftovers and the family needs something that feels celebratory without requiring another four hours in the kitchen. But you can also make the components fresh, which I'll teach you here. Either way, you're participating in a Delaware tradition that deserves to be known coast to coast.