Feliza Salazar’s sandwich shop inside the Oscar de la Tienda mini-mart in San Antonio...
It’s takeout, mostly, aside from three seats at the compact counter and a table in the back. Apart from the six sandwiches on the menu and a rotating special, there's nothing else to it. Nothing except a whole mini-mart worth of chips, drinks and desserts. Cupcakes, kombucha and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, anyone? Or maybe just a six-pack of Miller High Life ponies.
Salazar comes by the hustle honestly, having spent seven years working for Subway, eventually running three stores. But it’s not accurate to compare Wicked Wich to that franchise factory. Except to say that this is what they want to be when they grow up.
And this is where Salazar leaves Subway behind, because it’s not just a salty, fatty pile of unaffiliated lunchmeats. They help each other out, balancing turkey’s athletic lean with mortadella’s velvet gloss, beef’s stoic reserve with capicola’s loudmouth swagger. It’s all built on a soft sub roll with a full dress of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, vinegar, oil and brown mustard to keep things from getting too stiff and formal.