New Orleans’s most famous neighborhood is known as the French Quarter, but it was once referred to as “Little Palermo” due to nearly 300,000 mostly Sicilian immigrants who moved to the city between 1884 and 1924, leaving an indelible mark on the Crescent
City’s food culture. Alongside the po’ boy, the muffuletta, a purely Italian-American beast of a sandwich that grew out of this flood of immigration, is one of the defining sandwiches of New Orleans.
Sicilian workers, whose groceries, bakeries, pasta factories, and pushcarts dotted the neighborhood, often stopped into Central Grocery across from the French Market at lunchtime for bread, olives, cold cuts, and cheese — usually standing up or balancing a plate precariously on their laps as they ate.
Salvatore Lupo, who opened Central Grocery in 1906, decided there had to be a better way. Using a seeded Italian loaf as big as a plate, he layered it with olive salad, Genoa salami, ham, mortadella, provolone, and Swiss cheese. It was a neatly constructed two-handed working man’s lunch. It didn’t even matter if you finished it because it made great leftovers.
New in this update: The iconic St. Bernard Parish institution Rocky and Carlos makes the list for its standout muffuletta served with a generous side of hospitality, while Zuppardo’s is the perfect stop for a grab-and-go muffuletta to tuck into luggage on the way to the airport. Locations are listed geographically from north to south.
