LOS ANGELES — Rounds of sliced-thin, pink, white-speckled mortadella are popping up on sandwiches, on charcuterie plates and even in the occasional cocktail in Los Angeles, but it's hard to view any food item depicted in ancient Roman carvings as a flash in the pan. The Italian deli meat that traces its roots to Bologna and as far back as the Etruscans isn't new, but of late it's been gaining the kind of star power that salami and prosciutto have hogged for too long.
At Grandmaster Recorders the aromatic deli meat is draped gently around piping hot, freshly fried cacio e pepe-flavored zeppole (doughnuts) all buried under freshly grated pecorino. At Pizzeria Bianco, it takes sandwich form on a round of focaccia with goat cheese and arugula, while La Sorted's showcases the thin slices on even fluffier focaccia with burrata and a slick of slightly sweet pistachio cream. It's served as an option on the cured-meat plate at Capri Club, a new addition to the best bars in L.A., and cocktail bar Thunderbolt even recently experimented with crafting a cocktail employing the deli meat, creating an old-fashioned that featured mortadella-washed bourbon.
Mortadella — a popular cold cut throughout Italy for centuries — is making meaty waves in the U.S., where a maligned derivative, bologna, lacks the nuance in texture and flavor of its inspiration. A blend of pork cuts and fat, originally ground together in a mortar in the Emilia-Romagna region, mortadella is essentially a large cooked pork sausage spiced with myrtle, garlic and pepper. In 1998, it received its own Protected Geographical Indication — meaning its ingredients and methods must adhere to a strict set of criteria to be considered authentically regional. L.A. chefs and diners have taken note of the appeal of mortadella.
