My go-to spot for such a colossus would have been Manganaro’s Hero Boy on Ninth Avenue, which claimed to be the originators of the six-foot sandwich it had peddled since the 1950s. What a store that was. You could smell the funk of aged provolone and the must of prosciutto from the sidewalk. It was thrilling to see those sandwiches being trucked out the front door by two aproned deli guys — one in front and one in back, like pallbearers, with the long white cardboard box on their shoulders — and sliding it into the back of the delivery van. But the shop closed down this year, and so I decided to make my own.