What Are The Vegan Options At Primanti Bros? (Updated Guide)

Sandwich, please… The Pittsburgh style!

It’s true that sandwiches are everyone’s go-to meal, especially since you can just carry them with you everywhere you go. They’re also easy and quick to prepare. But sometimes, the grab and go option helps a lot, especially when you’re always on the road.

Primanti Bros doesn’t publish allergen or ingredient information for its menu. That means nothing here can be confirmed vegan from an official source — the items below are what’s on the menu, plus the questions worth asking before you order.

That includes the Southwest Black Bean Burger, which an earlier version of this page presented as the reliable vegan pick. It is not one, and the section below explains why.

Primanti Bros, Inspiration Meets Opportunity

During the Great Depression, Joe Primanti, a Pennsylvania-born entrepreneur invented his signature sandwiches in 1933 and fed hundreds of hungry workers in Pittsburgh’s Strip District at 18th Street. His brothers Stanley and Dick later joined him serving many late nights and early morning workers at their small diner at Smallman and 18th Street.

The signature sandwiches became a hit that many workers on the road keep coming back to get a taste of the Primantis famous sandwich-fries combo. According to the Primantis’ nephew John DiPriter, the signature sandwiches started out when a worker drove up to their diner with his truck loaded with potatoes.

He brought the potatoes to the diner to see if they were frozen. Joe tried to grill the potatoes. Looking good and delicious, customers started asking for them, and he started putting them on the sandwich. Unconsciously, the Primantis didn’t know that the sandwiches will put Pittsburgh on the map.

The sandwiches are known for their combination of grilled meat, tomato slices, melted cheese, oil and vinegar-based coleslaw, and French fries between two slices of Italian bread.

Primanti Bros signature sandwiches have been featured in several TV shows and national publications, including NatGeo Magazine, Adam Richman’s Best Sandwich in America, and Man v Food. The sandwich chain was also named one of the “1,000 Places to See Before You Die in the USA and Canada” by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

When Stanley and Joe passed, Dick Primanti sold the business in 1975 to Jim Patrinos. Today, there are almost 20 locations of Primanti Bros in Pittsburgh. There are also shops in Michigan, Indiana, Florida, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland, and Fort Lauderdale.

The One Thing To Understand Before You Order

Primanti Bros publishes no allergen data and no ingredient lists at all. This is not a case of a document being hard to find; there isn’t one.

The chain’s only nutrition and allergen destination is its Nutrition Calculator, and on both of the URLs it is linked from, the page renders nothing but a raw deployment error: “Missing nutracalc.js file. Please ensure that the contents of the ZIP archive this file was supplied from have all been extracted into the same folder.” It was checked twice, separately, with the same result. The chain’s /nutrition, /allergens and /menu paths all return 404. Its location menu PDFs are scanned images with no text layer, so they contain no allergen data either, and its online ordering platform sits behind a block page.

Primanti Bros also publishes no cross-contamination statement, no shared-fryer statement and no “we cannot guarantee” language anywhere. That is a notable gap for a chain whose signature product is a sandwich with fries inside it, served in a kitchen that fries meat.

So this page can tell you what is on the menu. It cannot tell you what is in it, and neither can Primanti Bros.

Primanti Bros Vegan Options

Primanti Bros is known for its grilled meat sandwiches. The live menu categories are Fan Favorites, Appetizers and Sides, Almost Famous Sandwiches, Tall Boy Sandwiches, Signature Handheld, Pizza, Wings & Tenders, Loaded Fries, Salads, Kid’s Menu, Desserts, Big Value Bundles, Beverages, Beer-To-Go and Condiments. No plant-based sandwich category exists, and item-level menus are not publicly retrievable, so availability genuinely varies by location.

The items below are the ones this page has historically pointed vegans towards. Every one of them is unverifiable: Primanti Bros discloses nothing about any of them. They are listed here with the specific question you would need answered, not as recommendations.

• Southwest Black Bean Burger. The item name still appears on Primanti’s own ordering domain, but no ingredient or allergen data is published for it. Ordering it without cheese does not make it vegan: black bean patties are commonly bound with egg or contain cheese or whey in the patty itself, and Primanti discloses neither. Ask what is in the patty and what the bun is made with.
• Fresh-cut French Fries, Primanti Size Fresh Cut Fries and Retro Tots. No ingredient data, and — more importantly — no published fryer statement of any kind, at a chain that fries chicken wings and tenders. Ask what else goes through that oil.
• Crispy Zucchini Planks and Spicy Batter-Dipped Pub Pickles. Both are battered and fried. The batter is undisclosed, which is exactly where egg and milk usually are, and the fryer question applies again.
• Giant Bavarian Pretzel. No ingredient data. Pretzels are commonly brushed with butter and served with a cheese sauce, so ask about both the pretzel and what comes with it.
• Whole Kosher Pickle. No ingredient data published, though it is the least complicated thing on this list.
• Coleslaw. This page previously said it could be made vegan. Nothing official supports or refutes that. Ask whether the dressing is oil-and-vinegar or mayonnaise-based.
• Build Your Own Pizza. Pizza is a live menu category, but no dough or crust ingredients are disclosed. Ask about the dough.
• House Side Salad. Salads are a live category. As previously described here, the side salad comes with egg, cheddar and croutons — you would need to ask for it without all three, and the dressings are undisclosed too.

The drinks deserve the same treatment rather than a free pass. Coke, Sprite, Diet Coke, bottled water and Red Bull are sealed third-party products, so Primanti publishes nothing about them as served. The beers and growlers — Miller Lite, Coors Light, Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra, White Claw and the domestic and craft growlers — are outside any restaurant’s disclosure entirely, and fining agents such as isinglass or gelatin would never appear on a restaurant menu.

Pro Tip: The items on the menu vary by location. You may have to check with the crew to see the availability.

Vegan Sandwich Vs Meat Sandwich

Regardless of your reason why you went vegan, being healthy in everything we do is crucial to our well-being. And this is why we have to keep track of our calories, sodium, carbs, or fat intake in every food that we eat.

Note that the figures below are general estimates for a typical sandwich, not Primanti Bros figures. Primanti publishes no nutrition data for any of its items.

A vegan sandwich is also a great source of vitamin A, C, and D, iron, and calcium, which meat sandwich almost lacks. If you notice, a vegan sandwich gives more calories compared to a meat sandwich.

However, this will also depend on the ingredients used. More often than not, vegan food has higher sodium content due to the flavorings and seasonings added to achieve the meaty flavor. In this figure, the gluten-free vegan sandwich has lower sodium but a little higher calories compared to a meat sandwich.

This is why it’s important to balance your meals and snacks all the time by piling up on more veggies and fruits. You should have fiber and flavonoid-rich fruits and veggies because they help a lot in proper digestion and are also a great source of antioxidants.

Always be mindful of your calorie intake, especially since extra calories are stored as fat, which can put your heart health in danger. You will also need to work hard to burn those calories, which you cannot do in just one sitting.

Another thing is the sodium intake, which WHO, CDC, and AHA recommend to take only up to 2,300 mg a day. Excessive sodium intake puts your kidneys at risk. It can also cause high blood pressure, which is a major factor in developing strokes and heart diseases.

For our bodies to work properly, we will need at least 500 mg of sodium daily. Lack of sodium can cause hyponatremia, a condition where you suffer nausea, vomiting, headache, fatigue, weakness in the muscles, and seizures. In severe cases, this will the person in a coma or death.

This is why a balanced diet, especially for vegans, plays a vital role in living a healthy lifestyle.

Top Vegan Deli Brands For Vegan Sandwiches

With vegan sandwiches nowadays staying on top of the game, fake meat plays a crucial role in producing quality and delicious plant-based meals. Luckily, there are many vegan food manufacturers that have been creating fake meat to pair with burgers and sandwiches.

I love homecooked meals, and I also have my own favorite vegan meat brands that I always buy whenever I take a trip to the grocery. Lazy days are normal, and you don’t know when it hits you. So, it’s important that you have these vegan meat brands in your pantry for easy cooking when eating out isn’t your choice for the day.

These vegan deli slices are available at your local grocer or supermarkets. But you can also check these out online on Amazon.

• Tofurky Deli Slices (Peppered, Smoked-Ham Style, Hickory-Smoked)
• Sweet Earth Plant-Based Black Forest Ham
• Green Slice Organic Deli Slices
• The Be-Hive Deli Slices
• 365 by Whole Foods Deli Slices (Hickory-Smoked
• Field Roast Mushroom & Balsamic Deli Slices
• Unreal Plant-Based Deli Corn’d Beef
• Lightlife Vegan Turkey Slices
• Plant Provisions Tuscan Red Pepper Slices
• Yves Veggie Cuisine

Research from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) highlights that vegan deli slices offer a valuable source of folate, iron, and fiber. While these plant-based alternatives contain less saturated fat than ground meat, they tend to have higher sodium levels and typically provide less protein, vitamin B12, and zinc.

However, fake meat is considered healthier than real meat due to its nutrients that are not found in real meat. Most real meats are always associated with cancer, kidney failure, strokes, and heart diseases. This is why many people have now switched to a higher percentage of plant-based diets if not fully vegan or vegetarian.

The Bottom Line

Primanti Bros isn’t a vegan sandwich chain, and unlike most chains this size it publishes nothing that would let you work around that. There is no allergen matrix, no ingredient list, no nutrition data and no cross-contamination statement — the one tool the company points customers at has been broken long enough to serve a raw JavaScript error rather than a page.

This page used to tell readers that the Southwest Black Bean Burger becomes vegan if you hold the cheese. That was the most consequential claim on the page and it had nothing behind it. If you are eating at Primanti Bros as a vegan, you are relying entirely on what the staff at that location can tell you about the patty, the batter, the dough, the dressings and the fryer — and none of it is written down anywhere.

If you love homecooked meals, you always have the option to make your own sandwich in the comfort of your own home. There are also other chains that serve plant-based sandwiches, and I’ve listed some of them in this article. Have fun!