BY MEG VAN HUYGEN for WEEKLY VOLCANO | 9/18/2026
East Harlem rapper Bodega Bamz once said the NYC-style chopped cheese is “a drug dealer sandwich,” and I always remember this whenever I think about or eat one. It really does feel lurid and illicit. Found in the neighborhood bodegas, it’s a cheap, heavy belly buster that’s perfect for soaking up booze. A sandwich of the night.
The idea here is that, if you chop up a hamburger patty and then grill the chunks, not only does it cook faster, but you also get crispier Maillard-ed surface area to each bite. Onions and often peppers are added to the grill, and then it’s all suffocated in American cheese and poured into a mayonnaised roll. Ideally, it should comprise yesterday’s hamburger patties that’ve then been pulverized and recaramelized. Hence the name: it’s essentially a mangled cheeseburger, looking like it got whacked and dismembered under the Pulaski Skyway by the Soprano crew.
The chopped cheese is elusive around these parts, which is fine, by the way. Nothing annoys me more than when someone moves to a new city thousands of miles away and constantly asks everyone where all their hometown’s regional specialties are. They’re in Kalamazoo, beloved, where you left them. But just like teriyaki takeout is tough to pin down in New York, it’s hard to find the East Coast bodega classics in Tacoma, to say nothing of Lakewood.
Emad’s Subs changed all that when it opened in August 2026. In the former Erawan Thai space on Pacific Highway Southwest, near Lakewood Station, the vibe is a little hodgepodge. The aggressive AI food posters plastered on both the exterior and interior walls are pretty jarring. They kept the old bamboo wainscoting in the dining room. There are a few tables and a grassy selfie wall.
This all melts into the background when you order a sando and are handed a massive paper-wrapped bazooka. These are very large sandwiches, especially for the price. They’re also halal, which usually ensures a slightly higher quality.
Emad’s menu is a fine lineup of archetypal East Coast sammies (pastrami and Swiss, hot turkey, Philly cheesesteak), but my boyfriend and I made a beeline for that choppy cheese. For starters, we thought we’d split a “giant” fourteen-inch sandwich for $19.99, only four more dollars than the “regular” eight-inch.
My name was called and we peered into the bag, and what to our wondering eyes should appear but TWO full sandwiches! I got back up and told the server there must be some mistake, for we only ordered one.
“No, that’s the giant,” I was told. “It’s so big, we just cut it in half for you. It won’t fit in the bag otherwise!” I guess I wasn’t really doing spatial measurements when I ordered, and to be fair, “giant” was right there in the name all along. Well, damn. Best deal in town.
Having lived in NYC for a while, I can say this is pretty much what you’re gonna get if you order a chopped cheese in the Bronx. Ground beef, American cheese, industrial-strength mayonnaise, and sautéed onions and green peppers, all coalescing into a slow-flowing morass. A million tiny smashburgers floating in a smooth ocean of processed cheese. I tried to eat half of my half; it was so huge, but the rest didn’t even survive the ride home.
On bread: The West Coast likes to toast its breads whenever possible, but this sandwich is based around a soft roll. It’s appropriate that they also serve cheesesteaks at Emad’s, for the chopped cheese obviously shares DNA with it, right down to the fluffy Amoroso’s-style roll. (It is probably from Cash & Carry, not Amoroso’s.) My guy Stephen, a born sandwich philosopher, broke the logic down as we ate:
“It all depends on what’s on the bread. Like, I like crusty baguettes, like Not Bad’s sandwiches are on, but the cheesesteak-grade rolls have some absorbency to them in a way that the crispy, crusty bread doesn’t. You want the hard-baked bread to be firm against the butter and ham. But here, you have squishy things inside, so you want to have a soft bread to act like a forgiving pillow, so it doesn’t squirt out the other end.”
Facts. Embrace the soft roll. It’s both cultural and practical.
Although the restaurant’s opening seemed sudden, co-owner Emad Qaifi also owns Taste of Yemen in Kent, Yemeni House in Lynnwood, and previously owned One Million Cafe in Seattle, so he’s no newbie to the restaurant biz. Meanwhile, the other co-owner, longtime deli worker Mazen Alareeki, said he’s only been here in Tacoma for a New York minute. “I just moved here one month ago!” He grinned after asking us how we liked our sandwiches.
We liked them very well, so much that last week, after a nutty workday, I broke one of my cardinal restaurant rules and Uber Eats-ed us a couple of Emad’s Subs for dinner. (Online food ordering apps don’t treat restaurants well, so I always go in if I can!) We went for the hot turkey club BLT, the Philly cheesesteak, and the Greek fries.
Both were solid examples of what cheesesteaks and hot turkey subs are supposed to be. Like its cousin, the cheesesteak was meaty and ooey and gooey, bubbling over with liquefied American cheese (although FYI for real Philly folks, it’s not Whiz). The hot turkey BLT might be the sleeper hit here, served with bacon, lettuce, tomato, and mayo. I personally enjoyed the halal beef bacon, which I was trying for the first time ever. It’s just more pastrami is what it is.
Speaking of, I’m absolutely going for their Reuben next time, which comprises both pastrami and corned beef.
The Greek fries were a serving of fries buried in an equal volume of feta and house cheese sauce. They were nice. I like cheese.
This little strip mall shop in Lakewood does carry bodega touches, and it may well add more once it’s been open for more than a month and a half. Notably unlike a NYC bodega, though, Emad’s is not crowded yet. Let’s help them out.
Emad’s Subs,
11620 Pacific Hwy SW, Suite C, Lakewood, WA
@emadssubs
