Bub and Pop’s. 100 Florida Ave., NE.
Bub and Pop’s abruptly shuttered in early June, alarming many Washingtonians that the beloved sandwich shop was gone for good. To the relief of everyone who enjoys its overstuffed hoagies, it reopened over the weekend in a new location in NoMa, formerly home to the Eleanor.
The core of the menu remains the same with favorites such as the Italian hoagie and the Hebrew Hammer (21 day-cured corned beef, roast turkey, roast beef, Swiss cheese, spicy mustard, thousand island dressing, and cole slaw). Chef-owner Jon Taub is particularly excited about a Polin oven—”the Ferrari of ovens”—to bake his own hoagie rolls. Taub has also expanded the “not sandwich” offerings to include a carbonara pasta salad and a fried chicken cutlet salad in addition to some briny bar snacks like marinated mushrooms and housemade pickles.
Other new additions will include a soft-serve machine, an old-school soda fountain, and full bar. The hours will also expand, and there are plans to eventually offer some kind of breakfast and late night fare. “But we definitely don’t want to lose the identity of what Bub and Pop’s is,” Taub says. “Our hoagies and cheesesteaks, those aren’t going to go anywhere, because that’s what people fucking want really bad.” Also sticking around: the Li’l Petey sandwich-eating-challenge, where patrons can attempt to eat a five-pound, 12-inch hoagie and fries in 15 minutes or less to get the meal (and heartburn) for free.
Taub has wanted to offer a soda bar since Bub and Pop’s originally opened. As a kid, he loved an old-school diner called Nifty Fifty’s in South Philly. “Literally the whole back of their menu was just nothing but like hundreds of soda ideas,” he recalls. Now, his patrons can experiment with 46 different soda syrup flavors—and Taub envisions that they’ll soon be able to spike their sodas as well. Bub and Pop’s is still waiting on its liquor license, but plans feature a full bar with wines and craft beers too.
The new location will also offer duckpin bowling alleys (think bowling but with smaller bowls and pins), a relic of the Eleanor that Taub has kept with the hopes of starting a duckpin bowling league. It also has a number of other arcade games and a juke box.
The move has been coming for a while, after Taub says the landlord decided to double rent on the small sandwich spot. Meanwhile, the landlord filed an eviction case against Bub and Pop’s in March, seeking $250,000 in unpaid rent and fees. Taub declined to comment on the suit. He did tell Washingtonian that he thought long and hard about potentially leaving the area altogether. “We talked about all these different options that we had,” he says recounting the decision to stay. “And we kind of felt, since we’ve been here for a dozen years and we built this name, that we didn’t really want to shutter Bob and Pop’s.”
