Central Grocery and Deli
Century-old Italian deli counter where a stuffed round loaf of cold cuts and marinated olive salad was first assembled.
Location
About this audio guide
At Central Grocery and Deli in New Orleans, the guide follows Salvatore Lupo, a Sicilian immigrant grocer around 1906 watching French Market farmers balance bread, cold cuts, and olive salad on their knees at lunch. You'll hear how he solved that problem by stuffing it all into one round loaf, creating the muffuletta almost by accident. The story continues through the deli's still-secret olive salad recipe and the 2021 flooding from Hurricane Ida that shut the shop down for two years. Watch the line stretch down Decatur Street, the same crowd Lupo once fed off crates outside his door.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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