Move over Subway and Quizno’s. Which Wich, a revolutionary sandwich chain out of Dallas has arrived in San Diego. Which Wich spares customers the aggravation of having to repeat condiment specifications to burnt-out employees tired of hearing “none of this” and “more of that.”

Ordering at Which Wich is as simple as paint-by-numbers. A large menu board showing 10 types of sandwiches adorns a wall lined with brown-bag dispensers – numbered to correspond to each sandwich category, including “seafood,” “beef,” “ham & pork,” “vegetarian” and “breakfast.”

Printed at the top of the bags is a list of five base ingredients appropriated to each sandwich type. Here is where you begin coloring in the little circles on the bag you selected with red markers provided at the greeting station.

The “seafood” for example, allows you choose between tuna or crab salad, po’ boy shrimp, Buffalo shrimp or surf-n-turf (crab and roasted beef). Or from an “Italian” category, you can opt for meatballs, pesto chicken, pizza (cheese, pepperoni and marinara), muffuletta (salami, ham and olives) or grinder (capicola, pepperoni and salami).

Also on the bag, you mark your bread selection (white or wheat), cheese type – there are seven, including Cheez Whiz – and spices, condiments, sauces and veggies. Crunch the math and the sandwich possibilities easily exceed one million.

Despite the dizzying choices, the ordering process isn’t complicated. Just imagine taking a short SAT test and then receiving a sandwich on a hot toasted roll just minutes after completing it. The customer-service concept is efficient: Turn in your marked bag to the cashier, seize a table, and retrieve the bag with your custom-made sandwich inside – all without having to utter a word over tall glass barriers. Are you taking note Quizno’s?

Every sandwich costs $5.25, except for an established cholesterol bomb called “the wicked,” featuring five meats and three cheeses. Whatever you order, don’t expect foot-long submarines. The par-baked rolls arrive from the distributor supposedly measuring around eight inches. But the rolls shrink while they finish baking in the Impinger, an innovative, high-heat oven seen lately in modern pizzerias.

All of the meats, cold cuts, name-brand condiments and garnishings originate from Sysco – not a bad thing in terms of quality, since the purveyor distributes a reasonable amount of produce from local farms. Anyway, the reality is that we’re eating from Sysco a lot more than you might guess when dining out in this troubled economy.

Visiting with two companions, we tried three different sandwiches. From the beef category, we chose thinly sliced beef (cheese-steak style) along with provolone and caramelized onions. The sandwich was tasty and the beef a couple of grades better than Arby’s, although we should’ve built up the sandwich further with such extras as hot peppers, mushrooms, garlic and maybe a little oil and vinegar. Our bad.

On a seafood ’wich, we opted for a bedding of crab salad, clearly imitation, but satisfying when paired with lettuce and cucumbers. For our third sandwich, we zeroed in on pork tenderloin available in the ham & pork category. It became my favorite because the meat tasted as though it was freshly sliced onsite from a roast, even though it wasn’t. And we did well in matching it up to Swiss cheese, red onions, pickles, cucumbers and yellow mustard, which was applied a bit more heavily than I prefer. If you want to go light on a particular condiment or ingredient, you’ll need to squeeze the request into the margins of the bag.

Franchisees Dennis and Maggie Holland, who previously operated several barbecue joints in the Dallas area, opened Which Wich in Hillcrest – its California debut – recently. Come April, they will open a second location in Pacific Beach. There are currently about 70 other shops sprinkled throughout the country outside the state.

The shop has a minimalist, modern feel – cement flooring, no grills, blond wood chairs, stainless steel tabletops and a roll of paper towels perched by the soda dispensers that serve as your napkins. As for side dishes and desserts, it’s bagged potato chips, oatmeal-raisin cookies and milkshakes, a lineup that indecisive minds can easily handle.