We Sampled Jimmy John’s New Toasted Sandwiches and They Exceeded Expectations

When I, my editors, and friends who heard we were attending a sandwich debutante ball learned that Jimmy John’s has toasted sandwiches now, we collectively said, “Wait, didn’t they always? Wasn’t that like half the brand?” Ah, these ignorant New Yorkers … how were we to know what we didn’t know? Only a few Jimmy John’s franchises exist in this city, and they’re all relatively newly opened.

But much of the rest of the country already knows and loves the straightforward sandwich chain, which keeps it simple with two bread doughs, seven meats, and on the regular menu, only provolone cheese. In fact, America loves Jimmy John’s so much that with a valuation in the billions, the chain wasn’t quite sure how to expand what it already had into new places for people to eat. Fortunately for your taste buds, it found the machinery to toast its sandwiches, and now Jimmy John’s has announced three new hot and toasty sandwiches. I’ll walk you three each of them while I try to digest eating several of them in a short span of time. Here’s the skinny on these phat subs.

Some recommendations are based on firsthand impressions of promotional materials and products provided by the manufacturer.

The three new toasted subs are complex creations, all served atop French bread with lettuce, tomato, mayo, and bacon. As for how they differ, there’s something for just about every type of carnivore: red meat comes in with roast beef & cheddar, which thrives on a generous serving of horseradish sauce, plus some crispy fried onions and fresh onion for contrasting flavor and texture. The ultimate Italian really does go all the way on cured pork with capocollo (aka coppa, gabagool, or capicola) and salami, alongside ham and bacon. It also has fresh onion, and a bit of oil and vinegar beneath the mayonnaise.

If you don’t eat red meat, you’ll find the fowl cold cuts fair game in the chicken bacon ranch, but ask the staff to hold the bacon, leaving you with provolone, ranch seasoning, and the aforementioned parade of veggies atop French bread.

So we have options! And I ate all of them to help you pick the one most suited to your tastes.

You can get your mouth around these three new crusty flavorbombs starting March 3. While prices will vary slightly by region, the official cost for a toasted sandwich is $9.99. But keep your wallet in your pocket! On Tuesday, March 4, 2025, the company is giving away … $1 million in sandwiches! That’s 100,000 sandwiches, but you should probably stop at one and let someone else have a turn. To get your free sammy, log into the Jimmy John’s app or website, and place your order with promo code TOASTEDTUESDAY.

If you don’t nab a freebie, 10 bucks isn’t too bad for lunch, though it’s tempting to make it a meal when the chips are this good. And have you tried those red velvet or triple chip cookies? Okay, I see how Jimmy John’s is making its million back.

The new toasties are available anywhere you find a Jimmy John’s — a task slightly challenging to those of us in the Northeast, though not impossible, thanks to the Jimmy John’s locator map. And that’s not all. You can also toast any sando from Jimmy John’s Favorite Sandwich menu, which doubles the meat and cheese. The oven’s already hot! Put any sandwich you want in there, unless it’s from the regular menu. Now you’re in “tip the employee on the sly to run a regular sandwich through” territory, and legally, I can no longer advise you in these criminal enterprises.

Honor compels I play the regional card. The grinder, which you heretically call a sub, hero, or hoagie, was invented 2 miles from my house. Its composition is a point of pride in Connecticut, guarded as fiercely as Philly gatekeeps permissible variations of a cheesesteak. An Italian sandwich must fight hard to pass muster. But I’ll try to take it fairly on its own merits.

The ultimate Italian is a very satisfying and even novel meal if you just think of it as ordering a different twist on a ham sandwich … like a BLT merged with a ham, plus deconstructed pesto along with Parmesan and provolone. It indeed has Italian flavors — perhaps even a little too much so with the fierce oregano dominating the basil. It uses mayo alongside the traditional oil and vinegar, which is fair play.

Two things make me touchy about calling this an Italian: Yes, it combines four types of pork, but the lettuce, tomato, and onion don’t play nearly so big a role as in a classic grinder, becoming negligible instead of a formidable counterweight. And the ham dominates. Even capocollo and salami are hard to detect against it — the bacon, astonishingly, even less so, which really has to sting an ingredient known for taking over every recipe it struts into. I can love its tastiness if I mentally rebrand this as a very interesting ham sandwich.

For my money, this is the biggest beneficiary of the heating among the toasted sandwiches, in that the meat, bacon, cheddar cheese, and crispy fried onions all really benefit from the toasting — most especially the roast beef, which warms up to yield tender juiciness. But even more than that, the bread is toasted just enough to make it also crispy and chewy, while keeping it pillow-soft so it soaks up some of that horseradish.

These are powerful flavors at play, so much so that it’s a sandwich where deep-fried breaded onions get elbowed out and are difficult to detect. But roast beef and horseradish are a powerful combo, one proven time and again by prime rib. To that extent, adding the tomato, lettuce, onion, and mayo to the toasted ingredients feels like wasted excess. That’s like an entire extra sandwich unto itself, when we already built a really good one right here. Those added components are not detracting from the overall product, but they’re a lot of volume to add just to get buried. If you order this one, try asking to hold most of those extras. Even mayo vanishes into the horseradish, so why not stop building at the minimum effective and delicious dose?

The flavors in the chicken bacon ranch really come together beautifully, and I think of the three sandwiches, it’s the best tasting. Provolone is an inspired choice where cheddar or American might have been the instinctual go-to. I mean, what’s more American than bacon and ranch? Instead, we get a different kind of sharpness that really bridges the two meats beautifully. And lettuce and tomato give it just enough cool and crisp contrast to come back from the edge, while cutting some of the strong flavors with juicy veg.

As with the beef and cheddar, I question how big a role mayonnaise can play beneath another powerful white sauce, but I’m also reluctant to say hold the mayo. There are two kinds of people: those who love mayo, and those who don’t realize it’s in all the sauces they like. Mayo’s so good we had to invent a vegan version just to keep it in play.

If I only had 10 bucks in my pocket, this is the sandwich I would go with even while kicking myself for leaving roast beef on the table. Maybe you could get the roast beef and we could trade halves for full satisfaction? Use my promo code, TOASTEDTUESDAYTEAMTASTINGTABLE. (Note: Not real, but feel free to try.) 

These are a cut above what I’d fear for national chain sandwiches, and I see why my introduction to Jimmy John’s occurred when a friend in another city specifically hunted one out for me to try, gauging my reaction. While my heart will forever belong to the local mom and pop joints, I’d veer toward this brand at a rest stop over its main competitors, and most of the burger joints and mall stalwarts, probably on the strength alone of how fresh the bread was.

The weakness of these sandwiches might be the focus around some must-dos. The lettuce, tomato, and mayo get broadly applied, when they need a stronger presence in one place and could be completely forsaken in another. There’s a lot going on in these, and while it’s hard to argue with success, I think some of it is overconstructed. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” might be sound advice, but have you tried subtracting to just the ingredients that are doing all the work anyway? Let’s streamline for balance!

Anyway, all that said, I enjoyed these sandwiches greatly. Who am I to question my stomach’s wisdom? To put it another way: I smuggled each flavor home at the end of the night to enjoy it again for breakfast, even though my fridge was full.