This Is Subway's Newest—And Best—Vegetarian Sandwich

Fast food chains worldwide have jumped onto the faux-meat bandwagon. From Tim Hortons’ Beyond Sausage breakfast sandwiches to A&W’s ultra-popular Beyond Burger, plant-based “meat” options are everywhere right now.

This month, the sandwich chain Subway and the now ubiquitous plant-based brand Beyond Meat announced that they’re teaming up to create the Beyond Meatball Marinara sub, with a plant-based "meatball" created for—and available only at—Subway.

If you're eager to try one, take note that the sandwich isn't available yet; it will be rolling out in 685 participating restaurants in Canada and the U.S. starting in September, for a limited time only. The first Canadian market to get the new meatless sub will be Halifax.

The Beyond Meatball Marinara sub is a plant-based take on Subway’s classic Meatball Marinara and contains all the same ingredients—thick marinara sauce, Monterey Jack and Mozzarella cheese and a sprinkling of parmesan on an Italian roll—minus the meat, of course. (The sub's price is still to be determined, as prices are set by individual stores.)

We at Chatelaine were lucky enough to get an advance taste of the Beyond Meatball sub and... we really, really liked it. Though we’ve tried a lot of different Beyond Meat products this summer (including completely naked patties), Subway’s offering exceeded our expectations.

Beyond Meat touts the realism of their faux-meat products. The meatball product in Subway’s new sandwich, however, is, in our opinion, *the* most realistic Beyond Meat product to date. Made from peas, brown rice, mung beans and Subway’s breadcrumb mixture, it's incredibly similar in taste, structure and texture to real meatballs. Though the sandwich did have the characteristic pea protein aftertaste (which reminds us that this isn't real meat), the combination of the cheese and sauce did a pretty good job of disguising it. Honestly, if we didn’t know better, we would have thought we were eating Subway's classic meatball sub.

This is fantastic news for vegetarians who are usually stuck with subpar options at Subway Canada (before this new addition, the only sandwich listed on the Canadian menu without meat was the Veggie Delite—basically just vegetables and bread with sub sauce). As well, customers can ask for the sub without cheese, which makes the Beyond Meatball Marinara a great vegan option (though in Subway restaurants, be warned the sub's ingredients may come in contact with meat).