A Delicious Muffuletta Comes to the Washington Region

I recently wrote in great excitement (see here) about Manifest Bread in Riverdale Park (at 6208 Rhode Island Avenue). I also was excited about their sandwiches, especially their muffuletta on Saturdays. Well, I’ve been and I’ve tried one, and I’m happy to announce that Manifest Bread, which bakes sensational bread, also produces a fine muffuletta, the best I’ve had here in the Washington area.

The muffuletta is one of the great distinctively American sandwiches. For those who haven’t had one, the muffuletta was invented at the Central Grocery in New Orleans. It comes on a nice inch round loaf of bread with layers of ham, mortadella, salami, sliced mozzarella, and provolone, along with a marinated olive salad. I took Bob Popper, who had been wined and dined all over the New York City area for years, to the Central Grocery to try one. After his second or third bite, he exclaimed, “I can’t believe food can be this good!”

Manifest Bread creates its own version, and I note up fron that it differs substantially from the classic New Orleans version. So I’ll discuss the differences, but keep in mind that this is not a competition. You may prefer one or another, but both are delicious. Food is like that.

I haven’t been to New Orleans since I started photographing food, but the well-traveled Dean Gold of the Hungry Onion food forum came to the rescue with a photograph of a quarter of a muffuletta from Frady’s One Stop Food Store in the Bywater section of New Orleans.

That graceful wrist in the photo is not Dean’s but rather that of Kay Zimmerman, his better half. That’s a quarter of a nine inch round, the usual order.

Here are two slices of the Manifest Bread Muffuletta, together a quarter of a loaf.

Does that one on its side look kind of like a dragon to you? Here’s a view of the olive salad on the bottom of the sandwich.

Note that Manifest Bread has olive salad on both the top and bottom of the sandwich.

The meat and cheeses used are the same types, at least, and close to the same amounts, but the differences jump out. Manifest Bread uses a whole grain bread with a much greater density than Frady’s loaf. Call it meatier or heavier, as you prefer. It’s very, very good bread though, and it makes sense that Manifest would make a sandwich that’s much more… bread-centric.

The olive salads are much different. You can see that Frady’s sandwich giardiniera is more roughly cut. More important, Manifest Bread salad uses lots of Kalamata olives, but few if any green olives — and lots of capers. A New Orleans muffuletta uses equal parts of green and Kalamata olives, fewer capers, and, as I recall, more roasted red pepper — at least at Central Grocery., where I used to get muffulettas. The choice of olives makes a big difference in the flavor.

Importantly both breads have the same wonderful quality of soaking up the liquid from the olive salad without disintegrating, and Manifest does if anything a better job at containing the liquid. That makes the muffuletta perfect for take-out. Some foods — anything fried, fresh corn, barbecue, etc. — lose flavor and texture when they travel to your home from the store or restaurant. Muffulettas gain flavor as the olive salad blossoms and permeates the sandwich. You can fly home from New Orleans with a muffuletta and it will taste even better when you get home, assuming you haven’t eaten it all during the flight. It happens.

I adore both versions. I lean toward the traditional — I’m a fan of green olives — but your views may differ. The flavor profiles and textures are very different, but both are delicious.

In practical terms for those of us in the Washington region, Manifest Bread has the signal advantage of being much closer than New Orleans. My advice is to hurry on over to Riverdale Park on the earliest Saturday possible and get some slices of the Manifest Bread muffuletta. It’s best to over-buy, because it’ll still be good the next day. Those of you within reach of New Orleans should go there — I’m dying to go back. While you’re there, try a muffuletta, or take a muffuletta survey, and a po’ boy survey, and eat everything else you can.

One note of caution related to geometry and physics. Stay with me. I know I said there’d be no math, but here I’m not testing you, I’m giving you the answer. Frady’s sandwich has a right angle while Manifest has an acute angle. When eating a sandwich on dense, firm bread with an acute triangle shape, finger placement is as important as in playing, say, a cello. As Newton pointed out, when you bite down on the point of a triangle, the point of impact compresses and the the base of the triangle lifts. In the absence of a countervailing force on the base and the sides, the filling can escape. Think before you bite, and eat over the plate with a big cloth napkin in your lap.

With that advice, I’ll let you go mark your calendar to go to Manifest Bread this Saturday or the next, and to plan a trip to New Orleans. For Manifest Bread, I recommend a practice run on, say, Tuesday, to pick up a baguette and a pork rillette sandwich. Meanwhile. those of you who know of another top-notch muffuletta — round loaf, standard meat and cheese (or close), and olive salad — within, say, 50 or so miles of the White House (the site of the DC milepost), please tell me about it. Just give the name and location in the comments.

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