Having done serious damage to my expense account last week, I decided it would be wise to downscale this week. So I invited four of The Hill’s young interns to join me at Potbelly Sandwich Works.

You don’t have to go far to find a Potbelly in D.C. There are 10 of the popular Chicago-based chain’s locations in D.C. — and a total of 27 in the Washington metropolitan area. The one we went to is just around the corner from The Hill’s K Street office, which was fortuitous given the difficulty of getting around town in Tuesday’s snow and sleet.  Still, there were more than 20 people in line when we arrived at noon, and about 35 queuing up when we left about a half-hour later.

The ambience is nothing to write home about. Noise bounces off the pressed-tin ceiling and the furnishings are right out of a basement rec room. You can choose from among 11 sandwiches, all priced $3.99 and toasted, as well as chili and soups, shakes and malts, various bottled and canned soft drinks and sodas, cookies, ice cream sandwiches, and side orders like chips, pretzels, cole slaw, macaroni or potato salad, and even a whole banana.

But before someone asks if Potbelly isn’t a little too down-market, I should point out that one of Washington’s top chefs, Todd Gray of Equinox, is as big a fan, as I am, of the oddly named sandwich shops. “A lot of my staff eats there and they love it,” Grey told me the other day. “They rave about the sandwich they call ‘the Wreck.’”

Turns out that’s the most popular sandwich on the menu, according to Manager Frank Lunacek, who often pitches in to take orders and help his staff prepare as many as 1,500 sandwiches a day. “I love the chicken salad, but the most popular sandwich is the Wreck,” he said

Naturally, we had to try the Wreck, which is definitely enough to wreck any diet. It consists of salami, roast beef, turkey and ham with Swiss cheese on regular or wheat bread, with a choice of mayo, mustard, hot peppers, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, pickles, oil and Italian seasoning.

I can’t pass judgment on the Wreck since I ordered what I always do, which is the Italian, a mouth-watering combination of capicola, mortadella, pepperoni, salami and provolone cheese on regular bread — hold the mayo and oil. The hot peppers bite you back, so I put out the fire with Diet Coke. Messy and simply delicious.

As for the Wreck, it got high marks from Jeremy Jacobs, a Congress Blog editor and recent graduate of Stanford, who said that it’s his favorite sandwich, tasty and belly-filling, and that he has it at least once a week.

My three other novice food critics were interns Margareta Heed, a native of Sweden who’s studying with the Washington Internship Institute; Stacey Pistritto, a graduate of Gordon College in Massachusetts; and Aman Ali, a graduate of Kent State University. 

Margareta chose the chicken salad with provolone on wheat bread. She liked the bread but seemed unimpressed by the chicken salad, saying it tasted like every chicken salad sandwich she’s ever had. She also registered her disdain with the potato chips, saying they’re never eaten with sandwiches in Sweden.

Stacey was more adventurous, opting for Big Jack’s PB&J, peanut butter and jelly on regular bread. She said she ordered it on a friend’s advice even though “it sounded strange to me.” She added, “It feels like I’m eating breakfast. It’s pretty good but I think I will go back to more normal sandwiches.” She offered to share a chocolate chip oatmeal cookie the size of a manhole cover, but I declined.

Aman chose the roast beef sandwich, thin-sliced beef and provolone on regular bread. He pronounced it delicious, which I was able to confirm because he let me sample it. “Potbelly’s is definitely a good bargain,” he said. “If you want something that’s cheap, quick, really good and very filling, it’s the best place in town, better than Subway or Quiznos.”

He was right about the cheap part. Our bill for five, including the aforementioned cookie, sodas and chips, was $31.31, or about $6.25 per person. To put it into perspective, that’s $212 per person less than my dinner at the Inn at Little Washington. And we even had a guitar-strumming troubadour singing in an alcove above us at Potbelly.

I spoke with Lunacek again later, and learned that he grew up in Chicago, where his parents often took him to the very first Potbelly, which opened in Lincoln Park in 1977. The family moved to Silver Spring, Md., where he went to high school; later, in 1990, he would graduate from the nearby University of Maryland. He was living in Austin, Texas, in 2002 when he went on Monster.com and saw that Potbelly was expanding to D.C. He applied and was hired and has been with the company ever since.

Lunacek, 38, said each Potbelly has about 25 employees, most of them young people and students working to pay tuition, who generally stay for two or three years before moving on. He attributes the chain’s success to its low prices, fresh ingredients — meats and cheeses are sliced daily — and to “friendly service that’s coupled with a sense of urgency. We don’t wait for customers to come to us.”

He added, “One thing you will find is that we have very, very loyal customers. I see many of the same people four and five times a week. It’s almost a cult, kind of like the Starbucks phenomenon.”

So belly up to Potbelly next time you want something quick, cheap, delicious and filling.