The man horsing into the swanky-looking Chicken Parm outside Morso, the Italian sandwich shop becoming a viral sensation just over 24 hours after serving its first customer, nods wildly when asked by The Irish Times if it’s good. “Absolutely,” he says enthusiastically, before pausing for a beat and a chew. “The only thing is you have to queue over here, and then pay over there and then you get one of those.” He points to a buzzer sitting on one of the tables outside Morso, the former Mani pizza spot on Dublin’s Drury Street. “Once you get that, there’s another 10-minute wait. But it is definitely worth it.”Sold, we join the queue. Seconds later there are about six people standing behind us, neatly validating our life choices. Cian Cooling and Jane Cudden from Darndale at Morso on Drury Street. Photograph: Conor Pope Cian Cooling and Jane Crudden from Darndale have the misfortune to find themselves standing close by so have no choice but to explain themselves. They are almost giddy with the excitement of it all.“I’ve been waiting months for this sandwich,” Cooling says. Months? But it only opened yesterday.“Ah yeah,” he says. “But I’ve been following the buzz on Instagram for ages. And I remember they used to have a food truck and it was brilliant.”Crudden says they have their order ready to go even though their time has not yet come. “We’re going to get the Chicken Parm and the Porchetta. And then we’re going to have half and half. We came into town specially for this.”The “this” she refers to is a dream-turned-reality for Ciaran McGonagle. The Donegal native has opened his new venture on the site of Mani, his previous venture which relocated to a bigger premises across the road on Drury Street earlier this year. He is marshalling his staff as they take orders, make sandwiches and rake in the cash and does not, it must be said, look delighted when The Irish Times approaches to see if we could have a quick word.“What? Now?” His faced is etched with stress and it is clear the very last thing he needs “in the middle of all the mayhem” is to stop what he is doing for five minutes to talk to the media. “Can you give me 15 minutes?” he asks. We return to our place in line. Lunchtime at newly opened Morso on Drury Street. Photograph: Conor Pope When our turn to order comes we go wild and get three of the six sandwiches on the menu. Actually by the time we get to the top of the queue there are only five options, as the Roast Beef has already sold out.We order the Caponata (the only veggie option), the Chicken Parm and the Turkey Caesar and hand over just under €40. The pleasant young woman managing the till hands us the buzzer and explains we’ll be waiting 15 minutes, thanking us for our patience. We join others at the tables outside, staring earnestly at their little devices and waiting for their buzz feed. It is all very zeitgeisty and a bit strange to think that Morso might not be here were it not for Covid. McGonagle was the general manager of Coppinger Row, the restaurant on the nearby alley that shared its name, before leaving there to open a catering business for corporate clients.Business was booming until the pandemic, and then it fell off a cliff. With time on his hands McGonagle opened a food truck selling pizza. But it wasn’t any old pizza. He started selling Roman-style “al taglio” pizza – which is close to focaccia – at markets around the city and people loved it. In 2024 he opened Mani, a slice shop on Drury Street, with Rory Shannon, formerly of Pala Pizza, as head chef and people loved it. The sold-out sign at Morso, which went up at just 2.15pm on Friday. Photograph: Conor Pope And now he has started selling sandwiches. And it seems clear people love it – by 2:15pm on Friday the sold-out sign had to be posted on the door, leaving some latecomers full of sadness rather than fancy Italian sarnies. With the crowd clamouring for food finally thinning as a result of the sold-out sign, McGonagle can now draw breath. “It is insane, and it’s a brilliant problem to have,” he says of the demand. “But it has been a really intense couple of days.”The made-from-scratch Italian sandwiches at Morso on Drury Street. Photograph: Conor Pope When asked what the secret to his sandwich success is he doesn’t miss a beat. “It is because they’re bloody delicious. We’re baking the bread fresh every day. This has been something I’ve been dreaming about doing for years. We’re kind of building the plane while it’s in the air. Everything’s made fresh to order. We roast our own meats and bake our own bread and make all our own sauce, using Irish produce whenever we can.”He admits the everything-from-scratch business model has been a challenge on the first two days. “People might have an expectation of faster service because a deli sandwich might be ready in three minutes, but we’re probably at 20 minutes now or even half an hour. Hopefully we’ll get down to 10 or 15 minutes, but if you want good things, you kind of have to wait, don’t you? We try our best to make it as fast as we can, but we really want to do it right in front of the customer. It’s just better that way. You’re getting the hot bread, hot fillings and maybe I’ve created my own little nightmare for myself here but it will be worth it.”And is it worth it? Well, The Irish Times had three sandwiches, each one excellent, but the standout was the Chicken Parm, which might just have been the very best such sandwich we have ever tasted.Was it worth the wait? Absolutely.