In honor of St. Joseph’s Day this week, our roundup feature for this issue is the signature sandwich of New Orleans, the muffuletta. (That statement is arguable, but the poor boy arrived on the scene later.) There are many muffulettas around town, but some are better than others, and if we may be permitted to blaspheme, Central Grocery is not the best.
To be fair to the iconic grocery and its sandwich, things have been tough for them since Ida. The vaunted French Quarter spot is closed indefinitely pending renovations. The website says the muffuletta is still being sold, but it does not say where or how. We heard it can be found on Goldbelly. Goldbelly is the site for people who really want to eat something so badly they are willing to pay any amount for it. You can order Drago’s oysters, something from Commander’s, a Chicago deep-dish pizza from Lou Malnati's, a Philly Cheesesteak from Gino’s, and so on.
Just be ready to shell it out.
But surely Central Grocery, if it is still making the sandwich, would open a retail space somewhere here in town to get it, huh?
Someone called the show recently and told me they are now available at Zuppardo’s on Veterans Hwy. My sister-in-law went immediately to get one. And she saved me a piece. She also picked up a half-muffuletta from Mo’s in Westwego, which I assumed would have a good one.
The others I have sampled in the quest for the best are, absolutely random and in no particular order:
Nor Joe’s
New Orleans Food & Spirits
Parran’s
Katie’s
Giorlando’s
DiMartino’s
Bosco’s
Full disclosure time here: I prefer mini muffulettas, and a credible version of these can be had at any grocery store in the deli section. But again I blaspheme.
My favorite of the real muffuletta, the full-sized version, was, for a very long time, Bosco’s on the Northshore. Here is a massive sandwich whose meats are stacked so high it is impossible to eat it like you would a normal sandwich, Eating around the edges and working your way in is the safest way to eat this overstuffed deli meat pile. This is not a quantity-supersedes-quality thing. Bosco’s muffuletta offers both.
This muffuletta defined the sandwich for me for a long time. Until this piece, when I really inspected all these sandwiches, and was disappointed to find the Bosco’s olive salad to be quite ordinary. It is the olive salad that defines the sandwich.
I have often said that Bosco’s was the best in town that happened to be on the Northshore, and Nor Joe’s was the best southshore if you didn’t want to go into the Quarter. Nor Joe’s is smaller, on better bread, with delicious meats and great olive salad. It too is vaunted, and rightly so.
And then I tried the DiMartino’s muffuletta, because that is their specialty sandwich, the signature menu item on which this mini chain was built. At first I was unimpressed. only because I was comparing it to Bosco’s. But is it really necessary to have so much meat you could make a second sandwich? The DiMartino’s version brought me to my senses. And upon inspection, the olive salad here really elevates the whole thing. It’s the decadent olive oil in the chunky vegetable olive salad that makes the DiMartino’s muffuletta so very good. With a perfectly adequate amount of meat and the classic bread. A great Sicilian Italian taste.
I was underwhelmed and surprised by another Westbank sandwich. Mo’s, a Westwego institution, is known for portions above all else. But I have been told that they have some of the “best” versions of a few things. The lasagna, while it may not be the “best” out there is very good, so I expected more from the muffuletta.
It had all the classics like the dense round loaf of bread and fine quality meats, but the olive salad was overpowering with garlic, and the carrots were shredded, making this less good than it should be. Too much olive salad can be a bad thing, and that was the case here. Stridently ordinary.
Even more ordinary than that one is what is served at New Orleans Food & Spirits. Magicians are in this kitchen, making true deliciousness out of less than perfect ingredients. This muffuletta is maybe the first thing I have had where the lack of first-class ingredients was an obvious detriment to what was on the plate. There is a thick pepperoni-like deli meat in this pile. And I’m not crazy about the bread, either. In my experience, I would rate this one last on any list of muffulettas, an aberrant item on this menu.
Over in Metairie, I had to try this special sandwich at Giorlando’s, a restaurant whose exterior belies the deliciousness inside. The food at Giorlando’s is unpretentiously terrific, and I expected nothing less of the muffuletta. Because I am so enamored with this kitchen, I expected to be wowed by their version of our iconic sandwich. I wasn’t, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t very good. It has great bread, the proper amount of very good meats, and an appropriate amount of good olive salad.
Parran’s is nearby, and I checked this one out too. For parties we have gotten trays of mini muffulettas from there a number of times, and they are far superior to their counterparts in the supermarket. Parran’s has a house specialty with a boatload of seafood in a good loaf of bread. The regular version of the classic sandwich is also good but not great.
So what is a great muffuletta? I was completely stunned by the one at Katie’s. Not because I don’t love everything Katie’s does, but because I couldn’t stop eating it. It’s just another “definitive-version-of” fill-in-the-blank here.
One of Tom’s complaints about muffulettas is that they aren’t supposed to be heated, but the standard way now is for them to be served hot. You need to specify otherwise if hot is not your thing. Katie’s serves a muffuletta that is assembled first and simply toasted enough to crunch the bread. The meats and cheeses are not hot and dripping. The combination of these factors makes this the muffuletta that pops from the crowd. Katie’s muffuletta also follows another Tom dictum: If it tastes good it is good. Scot Craig gets all his deli meats from St. Louis. The ham is Boar’s Head, and only the Gendusa’s bread and Boscoli olive salad are local. He adds Kalamata olives to the olive salad. The Scot Craig muffuletta at any of his restaurants is hardly an assembly of local products, but it remains superior.
The Central Grocery muffuletta on the shelf at Zuppardo’s rates way down on the list of the ones I tried. Perhaps it is the context of eating a muffuletta at the Central Grocery that has created all the fuss about their signature sandwich. When the place reopens it will not be the same. It can’t be. I never made it to the pre-Ida Central Grocery to have this experience, and that is regrettable.
But if it’s the Sicilian taste of a great muffuletta you want, it can be had anywhere. Start at Katie’s.
