Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Homage to the muffuletta

I've been thinking alot about New Orleans, and remembering my first trip there. It was while I was living in Pensacola, just a couple hours away on I-10, and we went for a beer festival. In theory, my then-husband was in Pensacola in service to the U.S. Navy, but a series of injuries and some spectaculary indifferent medical care left him with lots of free time. He filled that time hanging out with the brew master at a local pub, and we went to New Orleans to help pour the pub's brews at a beer festival.

I don't remember the time of year, but it was hot and humid, and arriving in the city we found traffic at a crawl because the street we were on was being repaved. We were to meet up with the beer people at Dixie Brewing, and when we finally got there, on of the guys from Dixie handed me a glass filled straight from the brite tank. I'll never in my life have a beer as good as that one, and I'll have a sentimental fondness for Dixie forever.

I checked a flood map yesterday, and Tulane Avenue, where Dixie is, was under over six feet of water last week. I haven't been able to find out any news on how they fared.

The beer festival itself was at the fair grounds, and before it started on Saturday, some guys from Abita Brewing took us to lunch. At the recommendation of a local, I got "a Frenchuletta and a frozen Barq's."

(I believe this was just after Coke had bought Barq's, and the locals were lamenting a loss of quality. I would have loved to tried the original.)

The Frenchuletta, though, was what blew me away. Damn, that was a good sandwich. Essentially it was an Italian cold cut with an olive salad spread, but it was the first time since I'd moved south that I'd gotten a good Italian sub. It mystified me, but in Pensacola, subs, be they cold cut or hot steak & cheese, were impossible to find.

They clued me in that the Frenchuletta was actually the restaurant's variation of the more classic muffuletta (the "French" part being the bread; a muffuletta is made on a round Italian loaf.)

That evening, we had dinner somewhere in the French Quarter. I remember very little...I spent the day at a beer festival, after all...but I remember having a muffuletta for dinner. And I'm not sure, but I think I had the leftovers for breakfast.

And I left with a quart of the olive salad from the Central Grocery.

Not only because they turned me on to the muffuletta, but also because they were such wonderful hosts, I also became very enamored with Abita Brewing. They make one of my favorite beers (Purple Haze) and I named my beagle after Turbo Dog.

Abita Springs is on the north side of Lake Ponchartrain; their damage from Katrina was minor. They are, however, already working on Fleur-de-lis Restoration Ale to help fund the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation.

I made a muffuletta for lunch today (it's sitting in the fridge waiting for kickoff). As it happened, I had olive salad...the good stuff from Central Grocery, and I hear they didn't do too badly either...from my parents' vacation to New Orleans. I was just thinking, it'd be better if I had some Zapp's chips, and I'm glad to see from their site that they are also back up and running.

I wish I could find some good news about Dixie.

(And from Chuck Taggart's Gumbo Pages: more history of the muffuletta, the recipe for the olive salad, and the answer to my question. Apparently, I had lunch that day at Liuzza's.)

Posted by Nic at September 11, 2005 12:52 PM | TrackBack