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We served our muffaletta porchetta on Italian seeded bread topped with olive salad and provolone cheese.

MUFFALETTA ARROW-CIRCLE-RIGHT Muffaletta is the name for both the round, seeded Italian bread with origins in Sicily and the New Orleans original sandwich that gave the bread its best and highest use. Salvatore Lupo, a Sicilian immigrant, opened Central Grocery in 1906 on Decatur Street in the New Orleans French Quarter. Many of the produce peddlers and truck farmers who sold their produce at the nearby French Market were also Italian and Sicilian. When peddlers and farmers, and dockworkers and laborers from close by, came to Central Grocery for lunch, they would order sliced Italian meats, cheese, olives and pickled vegetables, and a loaf of muffaletta bread. Lupo suggested

putting this antipasto of sorts directly on the bread, and the muffaletta was born. Central Grocery’s French Quarter building received significant damage from Hurricane Ida last year, but you can still get their famous muffalettas at our Rouses Market in Downtown New Orleans at 701 Baronne Street — and more locations are coming.

42 ROUSES WINT ER 2022