“Muffaletta FTW” summed up lunch well enough for a tweet, but I wanted to take a moment to expound and illustrate the deliciousness that is Dave’s Fresh Pasta in Davis Square. On a near-perfect early autumn day, I met J for lunch at Dave’s. I had recently visited with agile marketer tangyslice and we kvelled about the cuban there, so this time, with J, we decided to change it up a bit.
We spotted a muffaletta in the specials case, near the cubanos. How often do you get something like that around here? Muffaletta is a sandwich (actually, strictly speaking it’s a bread, but the name has come to stand for the sandwich in yet another example of culinary synecdoche) identified with New Orleans and apparently created by some Sicilian immigrants there. It’s a foccacia-like bread (the actual muffaletta) filled with an olive salad and layers of salami, mortadella, capicola (fill in as many cold cuts as you can handle) and cheese(s). Like most sandwiches, it’s best grilled. Plus, that flattens it out to size more likely to fit in your mouth. Dave sells muffaletta by the pound rather than by the sandwich or the slice, which seems like a pretty good idea to me for most sandwiches. Too often you get stuck with a lunch the size of your head and spend the afternoon fighting off a sleep coma. Anyway, here’s the delicious Dave’s fresh muffaletta:
Not to be upstaged by its spicier meatier neighbor, the artichoke sandwich with lemon basil pesto and fresh mozzarella was also on special. Priced and sized more traditionally, this sandwich felt healthier than the muffaletta but was no less enjoyable. The mushrooms and greens stole the show from the artichoke.
The cafe tables outside of Dave’s fill up quickly at lunchtime and are especially coveted in this gorgeous season.