Is there a better summertime sandwich cured-meats-and-cheese division than the muffuletta? Traditionally, the meats include mortadella, Genoa salami, and either ham or capocollo. What really sets it apart from other sandwiches, though, is that it gets better with age. You have to let a muffuletta rest like a sirloin steak; you have to allow it to breathe a little. If you can hold off from devouring a freshly made muffuletta, it only improves as it sits and its flavors meld, making it particularly suited to picnics and road trips.
The only problem with muffulettas is that good ones are hard to come by outside of New Orleans. Here, the absolute best muffulettas in New York. Broadway; Here is a muffuletta disguised as a finger food, a snack-size slice designed to provide ballast for a second Martini. Marks Ave. When the cherry trees start to bloom in nearby Prospect Park, the mortadella muffuletta makes its annual return to this gourmet grocery, where the locals regard the sandwich as a seasonal delicacy not unlike heirloom tomatoes and summer corn.
Fort Defiance Van Brunt St. John Frizell lived in New Orleans for eight years, which makes him enough of an expert to know a good muffuletta from a bad one. Even so, when he put one on the menu at this excellent Red Hook watering hole , he FedExed some prime specimens from Central Grocery and studied them like a gemologist inspecting the Moussaieff Red Diamond. Happily, the gestalt remains the same. And bonus points for a supersharp provolone, and the fact that you can wash it down with a Ramos Gin Fizz.
Ryerson St. Olive-salad addicts might say this has thrown the balance of the sandwich into disarray, but as the old adage goes, it takes all sorts of muffulettas to make a world. Lowerline Washington Ave. Sterling Pl. John Verlander has packed all the flavors of his native Louisiana into this narrow sliver of an oyster bar, where he takes inspiration from muffuletta mecca Central Grocery but forges his own path, swapping Parmesan for the standard provolone and including prosciutto in his cured-meats medley.
Okay, the meat-and-cheese colossus known as the Nicky Special, terrific as it may be, comes on a hero roll and is not a muffuletta. Or is it? Also: fried eggplant and marinated mushrooms. In other words, almost everything you get in a muffuletta and then some. Cheeky Sandwiches 35 Orchard St. Hester St. A particularly pickly olive salad gets spread onto slices of olive-embedded Grandaisy bread with Swiss Emmenthaler and tomato, then cooked on the griddle like a grilled cheese sandwich.
