Critic's Review
I hadn't been to La Spada's in a long time; a sub shop that doesn't have banana peppers is very low on my list of choices.
To add a rant here, Lauderdale By The Sea has really ruined this area. The driveway here is too narrow, and there are limited spots. The restaurant Frenchy's is not even open for lunch, and there was only one spot available; if there were no spots they would have lost a sale.
There are now 5 locations; the original location used to be across the street in a little take-out only hole in the wall; now they have seats.
I was wholly unimpressed with the staff at the SE 17th street location; the people here are the original sub masters.
I ask for an Italian Special with everything, hot peppers on the side. The don't put mayo or mustard on by default; I ask for both, with deli mustard. No minimum wage trainee writing everything down here; the meat cutter dude yells it at the sandwich maker chick.
A few minutes later the sandwich is ready. They used to make it in front of you, with a showman sandwich make throwing the ingredients together; now the girl makes it on the back counter.
When I got home the paper was all wet from the oil. Lots of paper too. Pretty hefty for a "small".
$7.25 for this. The sub rolled out of the paper upside down; there was no way to know what the "top" was. Flipping it over exposes their signature slice of ham on top.
The peppers looked awful, which is why I asked for them on the side. I don't want some old, over-marinated peppers on my sandwich. I didn't have any banana peppers, so I'd have less crunch that I like.
The trick here is that the volume of the sandwich is mostly filler. They load it up with iceberg lettuce and pickles and peppers. Not a lot of meat. The same amount of meat you get on smaller looking sandwiches for $5.95 elsewhere.
The sub is poorly organized, so keeping it together is virtually impossible.
A tasty pile of stuff, but definitely not the best sub in town. I can't remember the last time I got a really good italian sub.
Conclusion
They load the subs up with marinated peppers and pickles; for me the ratio of bread + stuff to meat isn't ideal. I prefer to be able to taste the meat. With all the extra stuff, I could hardly tell it was an Italian sub.
Review 5/11/12
I have to admit that I was initially fooled by Laspadas; the sub shop that somehow got a 28 rating in zagat. How does one get a 28 rating when your main product is a sandwich? You stuff the ballots. There's no other possibility.
When I first moved here I didn't eat a lot of subs; it was a once in a while thing. So the first time I came to Laspada, with the encouragement of the masses who assured me it was fantastic, I fell in line. I was impressed by their showmanship; the way they toss the meat around and assemble the sandwiches with some gumption. When you don't have something specific that you want, having someone slap a sandwich together can give you what you want; a sandwich with a lot of stuff on it.
But the restaurant business is relative; it's not necessarily how good a place is; it's how good it is compared to your other choices. Now that I've been to about 20 places in the area, I have a bit more perspective. I also know what I want. I ordered an 8" Italian Special with mayo and mustard and everything except hot peppers; banana peppers on the side. Believe it or not, Laspadas sub shops don't have banana peppers, which is a huge minus. They also don't have fresh green peppers; they only have sweet, marinated peppers.
The sandwich features whisker thin slices of not-so-great meat, soggy tomatoes and pickles that couldn't be discerned from the peppers. It wasn't very good bread. As a whole, it's a bunch of tasty stuff on a bun, but it didn't have the layered flavors that a great Italian sub has. It's so overpowered with the oil and the peppers that you can't really taste the other flavors in the sandwich.
It had been a long time since I'd been to this location; I'd gotten a sandwich that I didn't think was so great at their new location, and I thought that maybe It was just due to training. But now that I've been back here, it seems that the issue is that my palate has evolved, and the big sloppy mess just doesn't do it for me anymore. This was just an "OK" sandwich.