So where did the hoagie come from?

Depends on who you ask, reports Food History.

Two origin stories place it right in Delaware County, in Tinicum and/or Chester.

A common hoagie story starts with Italian-American workers at the old Hog Island shipyard in Tincium who picked up sandwiches from Al DePalma’s luncheonette. He called them “hoggies”.

Others say the word “hoagie” was used in the 19th or 20th century among South Philly Italians. Deli owners would give scraps of meat and cheese on a long roll to the poor people who were “On the Hoke.”

Italian immigrants pronounced it “hoagie.”

The hoagie was also supposedly invented when HMS Pinafore opened in Philadelphia in 1879, and bakeries created a roll called the Pinafore. Street vendors known as “hokey-pokey men” would fill the rolls with antipasto and sell it as a “hoagie.”

In 1925, Catherine DiCostanza made a sandwich from her Chester grocery store for a late-night gambler using every meat in her case, along with peppers she was making.

But Antoinette Iannelli said she made the first hoagie in Philadelphia from her South Philadelphia lunch counter and grocery store after a police officer asked for a sandwich when his angry wife refused to pack his lunch.

Read more about Delaware County’s connection to the hoagie in Food History.