March Muffuletta Madness! Part 5 Progress Grocery Company 915 Rue Decatur French Quarter New Orleans **** Rue Decatur is a strange combination of thriving neighborhood and Disneyland. Because of the many restrictions on truck and bus traffic in the Vieux Carre, Rue Decatur has a heavy amount of large vehicular traffic. This makes it an important part of the dynamics of life in the Quarter. It's also one of the main streets in the "tourist" section of the Quarter, which is where the Disneyland part comes in. In fact, when Disney held the world premiere of The Hunchback of Notre Dame here in New Orleans last year, the parade to kick off the festivities started on Rue Decatur. Once you get down past Jackson Square, you enter what used to be the "Italian" section of the French Quarter. Sounds strange, doesn't it? Well, that's the story of the Vieux Carre. Many of our location names seem incongruous at first, but tend to make sense when you hear the full story. From the turn of the century to WWII, the French Market was dominated by family-owned businesses run by Italian immigrants. The Italian community in the Quarter and Faubourg Marigny was large enough that the church next to the Old Ursuline Convent (on, of course, Rue Ursulines) was named "St. Mary's Italian Church. The ethnic designation was important to distinguish this church from St. Mary's Assumption church on Constance and Josephine in the Irish Channel, which was the main church of the German community. (The church for the German community is in the "Irish Channel?" There I go again with the name confusion. Yup, it's true, but that's a story for another time.) Anyway, back to the current story. The building in the French Market that is closest to Jackson Square (the one where Café du Monde is located) is called the "Butcher's Market," because that's where the Italian butchers had their open-air shops selling fresh meat, sausages, and other goodies. Across the street were several Italian groceries, where you could buy olive oil, dry goods, and other Italian delicacies. You can buy most of these things in your neighborhood supermarket these days, so the main attraction of the Italian groceries on Rue Decatur is now the one thing you can't get just anywhere--the muffuletta sandwich. Progress Grocery has long played second fiddle to Central Grocery, which is a couple of doors down in the 900 block of Decatur. The days of Progress being in the #2 spot are rapidly coming to a close, as the Progress Grocery muffuletta has surpassed the one from Central in both quality and value. Essentially, Progress still is what Central used to be--a neighborhood deli. Central has become a tourist trap; Progress is where the torch of tradition still burns. Your first impression of Progress Grocery is what most people think of every place they go to in the Quarter--yet another hole in the wall. It's the architecture of the buildings in the Quarter that creates this feel--everything is long and narrow. There are two small aisles of Italian goods (quality stuff, mind you, not stuff that's just there for the turistas) on the right side, and the deli counter and cash register are on the left. The menu is on a sign above the register. It's pretty simple--half a muff or a whole one. One way you can be sure that you're getting a fresh sandwich is when you go to a place that cuts the meat and bread right in front of you. That's what happens at Progress. In fact, when you order a whole muff, they quite often just wrap it back in the United Bakery wrapper that the muff loaf came in from the bakery! Progress serves the classic sandwich cold. Remember, "cold" for a muff means that the bread isn't warmed. My personal preference is for the bread to be warmed, for both muffulettas and po-boys. I find that Italian bread does better cold than French bread, so a cold muff isn't a big tragedy. A cold po-boy, on the other hand, can be a disaster. As mentioned above, it's nice to see the meats and cheese for your sandwich come off the slicer. The olive salad is in a big dish on the counter, and it contributes to that wonderful aroma you've smelled since you stepped into the place. There are quart containers of Progress' olive salad sitting on the protective glass of the deli counter, which go for $7.90 each. That's not a bad price. If you take to muffulettas, and you can get the other ingredients (or reasonable facsimiles thereof), this is good stuff. Progress has a small counter with three stools in the front window, but eating there just wouldn't be any fun. It's much more enjoyable to take your sandwich up to Jackson Square or over to the Moonwalk and enjoy it outside. I was doing a bit of running on this particular trip to the Quarter, so I ate as I walked around the corner. I'm shooting the "nine churches" that folks used to walk to on Good Friday, for a feature for the web site. One of those churches was St. Mary's Italian, right next to the Old Ursuline Convent. I dropped a couple more quarters in the parking meter (talk about taking risks--parking at a meter in New Orleans) and walked over to the church, eating my half a muff. The sandwich was cut into quarters, so it was pretty easy to maneuver. The sandwich was just great--good meat, good cheese, and great United Bakery bread. What really struck me was the quality of the olive salad. The olives really stood out. There are olive salads where the olives are mushy and you don't really get that distinctive "olive" taste. I remember one recipe in Jeff Smith's cookbook The Frugal Gourmet Cooks with Wine that said you need to marinate chopped olives in olive oil for hours before using, to take the salty edge off of them. I don't know what Progress does to their olives, but they still taste like olives when you bite into the sandwich. It really made for a great walk over to St. Mary's. You could see the olive oil seeping into the bread and the crusty exterior of the loaf had that toasted sesame seed taste that only United can do. The prices at Progress make their muff a great bargain: $3.50 for half, $5.50 for a whole muff. This is an unbelievable deal. When you consider that a roast beef po-boy at Mother's is now going for close to eight bucks, $5.50 for that much food is unreal. Now, I'm no light eater, but I regularly only get half a muff. I can certainly handle a whole one, but I prefer to get a half and then maybe a Hubig's pie or other dessert treat. I ate the first quarter on the walk to St. Mary's, and the second half on the walk back to the car on Decatur. It was a quick run into the Quarter, because I had to also shoot the Carmelite Chapel on Rue Rampart, and St. Augustine's over in Faubourg Treme, but it was still worth going out of the way. I'm going to make a recommendation that's bound to cause a bit of a stir. If you're in the Quarter, take a pass on Central Grocery, and go to Progress. I'll be doing an article on Central Grocery for March Muffuletta Madness which will explain this in detail, but for now, take it from me that Progress' muff is better, cheaper, and more fun to order. If you've had one or both recently, drop me a line at [email removed] and let me know what you thought of 'em. Cheers, Ed.
New Orleans, LA