Testing personality by sandwich: How do you handle a mess?
Hunkering over a dripping Italian beef sandwich with your colleagues isn't pretty, but it may say something positive about you: You're not afraid to get your hands dirty.
"People who eat Italian beef are spunky, risk-taking, adventurous and like to live life to the fullest," says Adam Schulman, 29, of Chicago, a business manager in the aerospace industry who attends regular "Beef Crawls" to sample different restaurants.
They draw "a crazy bunch," he says: "We have business people, doctors, lawyers, and one guy is a nuclear physicist."
Alan Hirsch, director of the Chicago-based Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, recently researched sandwich choices as they relate to personality type, though his study addressed simpler fare like ham and cheese.
So what kind of person prefers Italian beef? "I can only speculate," Dr. Hirsch says. "With Italian beef, you don't care how you look eating the sandwich. So maybe you're self-confident."
It's "somebody who doesn't mind digging in with his hands, a working-class guy," says Joe Nasca, 46, of Chicago, owner of Joe's Rock N Wave Diner in north suburban Antioch. But on the other hand, he says, "you see a lot of businessmen do the tie tuck, the stance where he tucks his tie in his shirt while eating."
And it's not just a guy thing, says Lisa Medellin, 42, who looks twice when her companions ask for forks or lift pinkies at Al's Beef in Chicago. "To me, the dirtier the better. It's messy. Just like life."