This Sandwich Demands Your Attention
It's Sandwich Sunday.
Before I arrived in New York, I knew two things about this city to be true: 1) No one waits for the walk sign to cross the streets. 2) No one is friendly: Don’t look at people on the subway and don’t respond to anything a stranger says to you out in public.
As a chronic starer and a midwestern girl, the latter was difficult for me to adapt to. But there are more delis here than there are in Chicago or Minneapolis. So while I can’t spark up a conversation with someone on the subway or stare into a stranger’s soul the way I could when I passed someone on the street in the Midwest, I can eat more sandwiches here. Life brims with these sorts of tradeoffs.
I bring this up because I recently ate an Italian deli sandwich.
For someone who makes Italian delis a large part of her personality, it’s shocking to say that this was the first Italian deli sandwich, or “hero,” as the Italians call it, of the summer. I have been too busy eating other deli sandwiches and foods that don’t classify as sandwiches, I suppose.
There is something so classically special about walking into an Italian deli. Even if you are meat averse, these institutions are worth a visit for the fresh cheese, baking products, and accoutrements. Or simply for the vibes alone! The classic light-and-dark-tiled floors, the cured meats that hang proudly from the ceiling, the crisp and characteristic red font of any historic Italian joint, the smiling employees in clean white uniforms. At these delis, sandwich-making and meat-slicing are such revered work that they require their own uniforms, like these employees are members of the gabagool army.
On Friday, I took my first PTO day, and I knew an Italian hero must fit into my clear schedule. So I walked my sweaty self to the West Village and I ordered The Italian at Faicco’s on Bleecker Street.
I watched as careful layers of prosciutto, ham, capicola, and soppressata were tucked into the crusty loaf of bread like layers of bed sheets and blankets on a mattress by the employee behind the counter. The man placed thick and bouncy medallions of mozzarella on top of the already abundant mound of cured meat. Tomato slices and shreds of lettuce cuddled up to shiny and slippery roasted red pepper. After one clean slice down the middle with the sharpest of knives and a careful wrapping in white paper, my hefty lunch was handed to me across the counter.
The weight of the sandwich didn’t go unnoticed as I carried it towards Washington Square Park, my lunch-eating destination du jour. Once I found a free bench in the park, I unwrapped the small-baby-sized lunch. The sandwich, nearly as long as the length of my thigh, sat on my lap. I opened it to reveal the sandwich’s cross section. That’s when the girl reading a book on the bench next to me asked, “What is that?” I told her I got the hero from Faicco’s, to which she responded that she would be going there before work, thanks to my brandishing of the sandwich. We joked at how dramatically I unveiled my lunch and exchanged further sandwich-related dialogue before I returned to the first bite.
It was a salty, thick, crunchy, meaty medley of a lunch. And a trial to consume. The diameter of the sandwich was unfit for an average-sized human mouth. As I struggled to eat it, passersby began to take notice. Every few minutes someone would pass me on my bench and steal a glance at me, a petite woman with a clean white blouse and a flowy beige dress on, and in her hands this comically large sandwich. The sight must have provoked curiosity and enthusiasm among park-goers, because people began coming up and asking me where the hero was from. One passerby even asked if it was from Faicco’s—it looked like something from Faicco’s, she told me, after I confirmed the deli of origin. The girl on the bench next to me smiled each time someone came up to me desperate for the details of my lunch. The magic of the deli sandwich.
Not even a quarter of the way through the first half of the hero, I asked the girl if she’d like my other half. Her eyes widened. I gave her the uneaten sandwich half and she thanked me many times over. She Venmoed me, which is why I know her name is Georgia. This made her day, she told me. Holding the two halves of the sandwich, we got to talking: she graduated and came here in 2020; I told her I just moved here. She asked where I’m staying. I told her the East Village. We got into our favorite places to eat here, and I mentioned how much I’m appreciating the many delis New York has to offer. She mentioned a deli I must visit, but the name is lost on me now. I told her I didn’t want to bother her for too much longer, and we got back to our own readings.
I shortly finished up my half and began to depart from the park bench. Before I left, I waved goodbye to Georgia. I had made a friend! In a public space!
I could talk about whether the sandwich was the best deli sandwich I’ve ever eaten. It was not. In all honesty, I’m more of an Italian grinder girl. But that Faicco’s sandwich didn’t need to push the boundaries of Sandwichian capabilities for me to return to that deli. I’ll return in a heartbeat because Faicco’s sandwiches are people magnets, the gastronomic equivalent of a Labrador puppy.
The sandwich was not just two pieces of bread with some fixings in between; sandwiches rarely are, in the same way that a meal is rarely the sum of its ingredients. On this afternoon, it was my ticket to socializing with strangers AND eating a delicious deli sandwich, to balancing my midwestern roots with my metropolitan reality. With an enormous sandwich half in hand, no tradeoff was necessary.
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Things I’m Loving
This cacio e pepe with hand-rolled spaghetti from Fiaschetteria Pistoia in the West Village was by far my favorite dish I’ve had here. The noodles were the chewiest and bounciest I have ever consumed. My roommates and I went here to celebrate the last week of being together in New York, and I’d recommend anyone to check it out if they happen to be in the area. It’s an intimate, dimly lit space where you can overhear servers and workers speaking Italian with one another, where you can witness a small but mighty kitchen staff make homemade noodles before your eyes, where the burrata is creamy and fresh, and where the panna cotta is perfection.
