NAPOLEON AND MUFFULETTAS

The signature sandwich of New Orleans is the delicious Muffuletta. This sandwich originated in 1906 at the Central Grocery by a Sicilian immigrant named Salvitore Lupo. The grocery still serves the sandwich using the original recipe and we had one from there on our second New Orleans trip. A typical muffuletta consists of one muffuletta loaf( a bread with almost foccaccia texture), split horizontally. The loaf is then covered with a marinated olive salad, then layers of capicola, salami, mortadella, emmentaler, and provolone. The sandwich is sometimes heated through to soften the provolone. Muffulettas are quite large and would easily feed more than one person. We actually split one and were full well past dinner time. The sandwiches at Central Grocery are wonderful but the best Muffulettas we've had to date were at The Napoleon House on Chartres Street. The ambiance of this place alone would make salad breadsticks seem a delicacy. Here's a little background on the history of the building...
The building's first occupant, Nicholas Girod, was mayor of New Orleans from 1812 to 1815. He offered his residence to Napoleon in 1821 as a refuge during his exile.
Napoleon never made it, but the name stuck, and since then, the Napoleon House has become one of the most famous bars in America, a haunt for artists and writers throughout most of the 20th century.
Owned and operated by the Impastato family since 1914, it's a place that suspends you in time, where you can hear Beethoven's Eroiqua, which he composed for Napoleon, and the music of other classical masters, while sipping a Pimm's Cup, and basking in an ambiance that could only be New Orleans.


Waiting for our Muffulettas to arrive...