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| - Aesthetically, DiBella's harkens back to a bygone era. One that is, as you might expect, totally idealized. The walls are all adorned with drawings of smiling sandwich artists of yesteryear. Clad in clean white smocks and caps, and passing their handiwork rolled in white butcher's paper to chaste coeds in tartan and knee socks, these men look like they wandered out of a Norman Rockwell painting, or a sleepy town in a Stephen King novel before the ghouls come slithering out of the sewer grates. Nostalgia like this is a tricky thing for a restaurant to pull off. Oftentimes, it makes our teeth ache, or our eyes involuntarily fling back in our sockets like gems in a polisher gone haywire. DiBella's manages to strike a balance, however. Their romanticized photos (here's a Ward Cleaver facsimile slipping in with a bag of subs as Mom, Junior, Little Sis, and Scraps arrive to welcome him!), their tile flooring, their kind and cheerful staff all match up pretty well. Sure, the gigantic subs for sale might feed the Cleavers for a week, but it's important to keep up with modern go-for-bloat appetites, one supposes. And gee, are these suckers ever tasty. And easy on the pocketbook, to boot! Laden with half a garden of veggies on a seeded sub roll, a build your own sans meat is a mere $6.75. Vegetarians would do well to get a Classic, as grilling all the soft stuff like tomatoes and cukes leaves the finished product a tad on the squishy side. Go to DiBella's soon as you can for luncheon or Sunday supper. Shut off your Cheever brain at the door, and prepare for a nostalgic overload twinned with a familiar sense of 21st century gustatory indulgence.
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