Frank's Sandwich Shop

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Chef Frank Volk said that when he came to town nobody seemed to
know what a submarine sandwich was.

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HUNTINGTON -- Chef Frank Volk said that when he came to town nobody seemed
to know what a submarine sandwich was.

But hungry Marshall University students and other hungry folks quickly
learned to love them when the popular sandwich chef opened his
 hole-in-the-wall shop at 1521 4th Ave. in August of 1964.

Prior to coming to Huntington and opening his little shop next door
 to the Marshall campus, Volk was a restaurant equipment
 salesman in the Baltimore area.

"When I got to Huntington," he recalled in a 1981 interview with Herald-Dispatch
 writer Dave Peyton, "I realized the potential for a shop specializing in
 sandwiches - not hamburgers and hotdogs, but sandwiches
 big enough to be filling and satisfying.

"The submarine steak sandwich was big on the East Coast at the time, but no one
had ever heard of it here. At first it was sort of rough. People wouldn't
 buy a submarine because they didn't know what it was. Then the
word started spreading and business began picking up."

Volk sliced his steak thin, seasoned it with a red pepper sauce made
in the restaurant and cooked it in butter on a flat-top grill.

At first, he had to fly in buns from Maryland because no local bakery offered
 them. But even after the buns were available locally, he continued to get
them from the same Maryland bakery, as he believed the local
versions couldn't match the quality of the buns from Maryland.

Later, the popular sandwich chef opened another shop where
Graley Autobody's drive-in claim center is now located
 on the corner of 3rd Avenue and 13th Street.

Frank Volk died in 2010.

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Note:  This Article and picture appeared in the Herald-Dispatch Newspaper on Oct. 15, 2018.

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