It's a mashup of an Italian-style hoagie and a Southern po' boy, with a distinctly delicious Middle Eastern twist.

In 2007, I was a recent newcomer to Houston, a humid Texas city on the Gulf of Mexico that felt as foreign to me as if I had moved around the globe. Unsurprisingly, this incredibly diverse city was teeming with international culinary influences. There was Mexican food from across the border; fresh Vietnamese flavours brought by refugees in the 1970s; and New Orleans-style food from people who moved here after Hurricane Katrina. Middle Eastern food was everywhere too, from vast emporiums stocked with brined olives, tabbouleh and vats of hummus to street vendors serving freshly made kebabs. But Houston's most distinctive sandwich was something entirely different: a mashup of an Italian-style hoagie and a Southern po' boy, with a distinctly delicious Middle Eastern twist.

A take on the popular New Orleans-style sandwich, its Texan cousin, the Houston po' boy is layered with sliced ham, salami, provolone cheese, mayo and spicy dill pickle slices, before being slathered in chow chow, a Southern relish made of cabbage, green tomatoes and hot peppers. But what sets the sandwich apart is its creator: Jalal Antone, the Louisiana-born, Texas-raised son of Lebanese and Syrian immigrants. His version of a chow chow recipe had a bold Middle Eastern influence, swapping out traditional mustard and celery seeds for paprika and turmeric, giving the relish a striking orange hue and a deeper, spiced complexity.

Antone dreamed of starting a Middle Eastern import store but was unsure of how it would be received by Houstonians at the time. In 1962, he finally opened Antone's Import Company on Taft Street, selling imported spices, olives, hummus, falafel and tabouli. At the time, most of Houston's half a million residents were unfamiliar with Middle Eastern food. To win them over, he devised a simple but effective solution: a sandwich.

"Houstonians were eating burgers in those days," explains Craig Lieberman, CEO of Antone's. "The story is that he asked his friends 'How do I sell a product to Houstonians?' They said, 'Come up with a chow chow recipe and put that on your sandwich'."

Antone sourced French bread from a local bakery, layered it with his imported meats and cheeses and added his signature spiced chow chow. The result? A sandwich that became a Houston staple.

By the late 1960s, Antone's had become a wild success, with people flocking there from far and wide. A postcard dating from........

© BBC