Strange Subway Orders You Might Want To Avoid

When the craving hits, or you want a particularly tasty lunch, does anything beat popping into a Subway for a satisfying footlong sandwich? It might not be anything particularly fancy, but you can personalize it to your heart's content with your choice of bread, and unlimited array of toppings. Some Subway sandwiches would even be considered nutritious, especially when compared with other fast food offerings. However, with an endless amount of choices, some people make some very strange requests.

There's certainly no accounting for taste, but some of the bizarre flavor, texture, and taste combinations people swear they enjoy at Subway will leave you scratching your head. Some are just a little odd, some are ridiculous, and some should quite frankly come with a health warning. Subway employees tell of strange sandwiches they've had to make for customers, all with a straight face and a smile. Here's a list of the strange Subway sandwich orders you may want to avoid.

Subway has a good range of sauces available for your sandwich. Some of these have been around for decades, whereas others are relatively new to the menu. According to a survey on people's favorite Subway sauces by Mashed in 2022, perhaps surprisingly, oil and vinegar came out as the most popular choice. In close second place is sweet onion sauce, followed by honey mustard, peppercorn ranch, Baja chipotle, and Buffalo sauce. 

On occasion, people might ask for half of one sauce on one half of their sandwich, and a different one on the other half. That's fine. But one woman went all in and requested every single sauce on her sub, all the way from Baja chipotle to peppercorn ranch, via mustard, aioli, and sweet onion teriyaki. According to a Subway employee on Reddit, they even asked the customer if they were joking, but no, the customer really did want every single dressing. "It was the biggest, most disgusting mess I had ever made," the Subway employee said.

Of course, when you say something like this, it makes people really want to try it, even if it's out of morbid curiosity. Milad Mirg gave it a go on YouTube, racking up millions of views. He said, "What if a customer comes in and asks for an all-sauce sandwich? And my simple answer to that is, no."

We all know what too much of a good thing can taste like. At first you're loving it, can't get enough, then after a while it catches up to you and you regret everything. How do you feel about mayonnaise? According to Livestrong, a lot of store-bought mayonnaise can contain high amounts of saturated fat, so could be seen as unhealthy. The Seattle Times says a tablespoon of mayo has 103 calories, 12 grams of fat, and two grams of saturated fat. However, you can always make your own mayonnaise at home.

As one Subway employee revealed on Reddit, one customer's love of mayo went way too far. The customer's instructions were, "Okay, I want a lot of mayo. Like, a lot." By accident, the cap popped off the mayo bottle, and drowned the sandwich with approximately a cup and a half of it. As you might expect, the Subway employee was going to start over again, but the customer "stops her and says that he'll take it as is, and that it is perfect." Now if that's not enough to put you off your next Subway, we're not sure what'll do it.

You might initially think no-one would order meatballs and mayonnaise together, but apparently the combination is quite commonplace. But as ever with these things, there's always someone who has to take things one step too far. 

One Grubhub driver on Reddit recalled a time when "someone ordered a meatball sub from Subway that had nothing on it but meatballs, the sauce, and about four times as much mayonnaise as would go on a regular sandwich. That was it." As if that wasn't intense enough, the same person ordered the same sandwich twice within the space of two hours.

The driver spoke with the Subway employee, who said the customer actually ordered the same thing two or three times a week. That's some serious meaty, mayonnaise dedication. Curiosity got the better of the Grubhub driver, who decided to try the combination themselves. Apparently the result was, "just slime on slime on slime," but at the same time they said, "it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't that good either."

Toasted seafood. It doesn't sound particularly appetizing does it? When you go to Subway, the employees will ask if you want your sandwich toasted. If you're ordering seafood, toasting it isn't going to taste great, especially if it contains crab meat. Imagine the smell wafting through the store as your seafood monstrosity rapidly heats in just 21 seconds. 

A step up from the meatball and mayo combo, one Redditor said they used to have a regular customer who would order a meatball sub with scoops of "seafood sensation" (fortunately now discontinued) which was basically mayonnaise and imitation crab. Then have it toasted. Another replied, "A regular I had years ago would get the seafood, add tuna, add sweet onion sauce, toasted. Smelled like death."

As one of the worst foods to order from your favorite sandwich shop, one Subway employee said, "The seafood sensation has no crab in it, it's just coloring to make it orange and flavoring to make it taste like crab. It's actually fish." However, the same person did go on to say, "Everything else though is really good and is all prepared in a good way," which is a relief.

People have strong opinions when it comes to sandwiches. One person's dream may be another's nightmare. But it does seem there's a Subway sub that the majority of people really don't enjoy. According to nearly 40% of people, the worst Subway sandwich is tuna. Mashed polled nearly 600 people in 2021, with simple tuna topping the most-hated list. No strange combination. No sandwich stuffed with cookies. Just tuna. Quite surprisingly, Veggie Delite came in second place with 28% of people saying they dislike the sandwich the most, and Meatball Marinara in third place. 

It's not the first time Subway's tuna has been in the spotlight, with a lawsuit filed in 2021 by two Subway customers alleging the tuna used isn't actually tuna. The story of the potentially imitation food went viral, reporters tested the fish at a food lab which found "no amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample," traces of other meat were found in another sample, yet another sample concluded the tuna was in fact tuna. To this day the court case rolls on (via NPR).