Salumi Artisan Cured Meats

Restaurant: Salumi Artisan Cured Meats

Cuisine: Italian/Sandwiches
Last visited: January 15, 2010
Area: Seattle, Washington (Pioneer Square)
309 3rd Ave South
Price Range: $10 or less

1: Poor 2: OK 3: Good 4: Very good 5: Excellent 6: Tres Excellent!!

Food: 5.5
Service: n/a (I wasn’t actually there)

Ambiance: n/a

Overall: n/a

Additional comments:

• Opened by Mario Batali’s dad
• Specializes and famous for cured meats
• Gourmet home made high quality cured meats
• Famous for cured meats
• Popular for sandwiches
• Large selection of cured meats
• Small selection of specialty sandwiches
• Home made
• Gift baskets available
• Platters available
• 5 course lunch parties available Wed/Thurs ($40/each)
• Eat in/Take out
• Lunch only
• Beer and wine available
• Open Tues-Fri 11am-4pm

**Recommendation: Porchetta

Drool!!!! This sandwich was delicious. Well the Porchetta was…

Now let’s start again. I wasn’t physically there to try the famous Salumi sandwiches, but I’m lucky enough to know Kim. Kim was in Seattle for business and had intentions on visiting Salumi, so on his way back he actually brought 2 sandwiches for me to try. I had heard about Salumi doing my own research, from Sherman, as well as through other foodie friends. I haven’t actually tried them since I’m from Vancouver, but I was very eager to do so the next time I was in Seattle. I have to see for myself what the rave is all about.

I tried the Porchetta and the Salumi Muffo – it’s interesting to note that Salumi is famous for their cured meats, yet the Porchetta sandwich (with no cured meats) was the clear winner for me. Next time I visit I would order the cured meats on their own to try separately. Probably better alone on a platter with some cheese than in the sandwich.

I just found out that Salumi is opened by Mario Batali’s dad. Mario Batali is one of my favourite chefs, so this is a big deal for me. However I’m not letting it affect this review because I wrote the review before I discovered this fact…so I’m literally just adding this paragraph in last minute.

On the table:

**Porchetta 6/6

• Salumi’s tribute to the pig. Pork butter-flied and stuffed with our own sausage meat and spices $9
• The description of the sandwich doesn’t really make sense to me, that’s not how I would describe it because it’s not what it looks like.
• This was an amazing sandwich though! It’s served hot so I had to bake it in the over before trying it again since it had traveled for 2 hours before hitting my mouth.
• The porchetta didn’t taste really salty, even though it usually is. Instead it was just so flavourful, it’s amazing.
• This sandwich is loaded with nice big chunks of porchetta (boneless pork roast). It’s as tender as pulled pork, but it’s actually chunks of it in the sandwich. It’s 90% lean with little bits of fat, but it doesn’t taste fatty at all. It was tender, juicy and had absorbed the wonderful flavours of the whole fennel seeds.
• There were lots of fennel seeds and it brought a beautiful licorice and black pepper flavour to the meat. There was also some garlic although you can’t see it. It’ s very subtle and the garlic flavour is more infused.

  

• The sausage meat was almost like meat loaf, but there wasn’t much of it. The mixture of the two meats just made for an extra tender sandwich.
• There was also a subtle and natural sweetness to the meat and this was thanks to the carrots and celery. The porchetta is supposed to be butterflied and stuffed with veggies, tied and then roasted, but that’s not what it looked like. I did see very small and minimal pieces of carrot, but the pork pieces were chunks.
• This sandwich hardly had any other ingredients or sauces and it didn’t need any. (I love sauce too!) It was simple and just great tasting slowly roasted pork.
• The bread was a baguette and it wasn’t too chewy. I could have eaten the meat alone that was definitely the star.
• FYI – I know a secret! At least I think I know part of it! I’ve never been there so I haven’t witnessed how they make it so may be no secret at all. But beside the porchetta, the secret is in the butter they use for the bread. It’s not butter! They actually use the pork lard (fat) as the butter. I can see and taste it! It has so much flavour and is SO bad for you, but it makes the difference and adds flavour!

Salumi Muffo 4.5/6

• With vegetables, olives, pimiento, provolone, cooked salami, and spicy Sopressata $9
• This is a slightly spicier sandwich but still savoury from the olive, sweet from the veggies (carrots, onions and maybe some celery) and tangy from the pimiento. It tastes like a cross between a green olive tapenade and an antipasto. It was very Mediterranean/Spanish and they brighten it up with some freshly chopped Italian flat leaf parsley.
• Sopressata is Italian dry-cured salami. The one here is made with whole black peppercorns and the slices are perfect. They’re nice and thin to enhance the best flavour, yet they taste thick…also because the quality of meat is so high. It had a combination of lean and fatty meat but the ratio was right, and when you bit into a black peppercorn it was just delicious and gave it that spicy kick. I actually could have used 1 more slice of each salami because the bread is thick.
• The salami is savoury with a slight tang at the end and it really matched the tapenade. They make all the cured meats in house with old Italian family traditions. I really felt like I was eating meat and not crappy deli stuff.
• The ratio of ingredients was right on as well however I could taste the olive tapenade the most. The provolone was a hard provolone so it stood up to the cured meats without competing with them.
• The bread was Ciabatta bread and it was a littler too chewy and too hard for my liking. However it absorbed the oils of the olive tapenade really well.
• The sandwich was pre-made and out of the fridge, which is a bit unexpected. It was a really good sandwich, but not excellent. I felt like the olive tapenade could have used a few different kinds of olives and the bread didn’t work for me.