This past weekend, Andrea Pirlo delivered a beautiful assist to David Villa for a lead-taking goal in NYCFC’s 3-1 victory against D.C. United.
But for Pirlo’s full impact, we have to look beyond the white lines. Is he also winning the midtown Manhattan lunch game?
We tasted Pirlo to find out. Um, we mean the new Pirlo-themed sandwich offered by
Howler magazine
and
No. 7 Sub
, a specialty sandwich shop with a location at the Ace Hotel, which just so happens to be a brief jaunt from the MLS offices.
The joint is renowned among city carb-consumers for fancifully named theme sandwiches (there’s one on
the menu today
called “Chris Pratt Is Hooked on a Feeling,” for example), and a finishing touch of left-field ingredients. (That Pratt creation, for instance, includes fried garlic and Fritos.) The joint is perhaps not renowned for careful sandwich-board spelling.
So what’s in a Prilo—sorry, Pirlo? In the human, sure, the ingredients are fine wine and the secrets of the world. In the sandwich, that translates to: a hunk of white Italian bread, salami, fried zucchini, mozzarella, and pickled blueberries. Yep, that’s that unexpected finish. The sandwich, like the man, contains multitudes, delivering the salty with the sweet.
So we had an office taste-test, which some staffers approached with more gusto than others. The trepidation is understandable – who wants to unexpectedly take down Pirlo at noon? Dax McCarty, for one.
Here’s what MLS digital staffers thought of Pirlo’s lunchtime performance.
“I had serious doubts about the pickled blueberries – I still can't describe their exact flavor profile – but it worked. Everything came together like a Pirlo-to-Villa dime. Like Poku, the fried zucchini brought it all together.” – Andrew Wiebe
“That was surprisingly pleasant. The pickled blueberries are subtle, and played well with the salty salami and fried zucchini. In retrospect, why wasn’t this more obviously delicious?” – Ben Couch
"The saltiness of the meat and cheese is offset by the sweetness of the blueberries, much like Pirlo's passes, while the zucchini provides the requisite crunch."-- Ben Baer
“When you look at it, you really don't know what to expect. When you take the first bite, you immediately feel a certain freshness. As you eat it you feel energetic, and when you finish it you feel there's no other sandwich you'd rather have for an office taste.” – Diego Pinzón
(Editor’s note: He went back for seconds.)
“An enigmatic combination. The saltiness of the mozzarella gets lost amid the overpowering flavors of the fried zucchini and the salami. But then the sweetness of the pickled blueberries bursts onto the scene like a delicious, juicy through pass that leads to – what else? – a goal. I give this 3.5 Pirlo beards out of 5.” – Greg Lalas
“The only appropriate way to describe this sandwich is Bluebaerry.” – Matt Folger
“I'm a sucker for salami and fresh mozzarella, so the sandwich was already off to a great start in my book. The zucchini added a good change of pace texture-wise and the blueberries added a hint of sweetness without being too overwhelming.” – Nicholas Rosano
(Editor’s note: He also went back for seconds.)
The conclusion? Delicious in measured doses, but a healthy helping of all of those ingredients will, in the middle of the day, render you a dead ball – conquered by Pirlo. And what a sweet, sweet vanquishment that is.
