The trendy bite of summer 2025 in Seattle is a bologna sandwich.
Mortadella, the original Italian rubric for the American lunch meat, is a tastier version than our lunchbox staple. Porky, salty and brimming with nutmeg and other fall spices, mortadella packs far more fat and nuanced flavors into its bite than Oscar Mayer bologna.
You can find the “it” sandwich of Seattle in cafes (Hushy’s Sandwiches), Italian delis (Bottega Gabriele), taprooms (Human People Beer Café), wine bars (Nomadic Wine Dispensary), coffeehouses (Top Dead Center) and countless neighborhood haunts and lunch spots for office workers. And it may soon appear at My Friend Derek’s pizza parlor in Tangletown, at Rain Shadow Meats on Capitol Hill and at Sacro Bosco in the Central District, the new Roman pizzeria from Temple Pastries baker Christina Wood.
Created in Bologna, Italy, this sausage consists of ground pork (usually loin and/or neck meat with cubes of pork fat) that gets emulsified with garlic, salt and other seasonings. After it is poached or steamed, the cylinder of pale pink meat resembles the hue of a worn pencil eraser; the marbled meat is interspersed with white fat.
Its sudden popularity around Seattle is an enigma. This underrated Italian meat has been on Seattle menus for decades, often served as part of charcuterie plates or as a bit player in an Italian grinder or muffuletta.
One possible explanation for the surge? Labor and food price inflation. Anyone can buy slices of meat and bread to assemble a mortadella sandwich, making this practical sandwich enticing for some coffeehouses, wine bars and beer tasting rooms that have no chef or kitchen.
Rain Shadow Meats butcher Russ Flint featured the sandwich in 2013 on his deli menu in Pioneer Square, serving it on a toasted sourdough bread with arugula, provolone cheese, Mama Lil’s peppers and mayo. It never sold well, though this mortadella evangelist stubbornly kept it on the menu until his deli closed in 2018.
“I’ve not had bologna since I was a child. There’s no reason to go back,” said Flint, who still operates his Rain Shadow butcher shop in Melrose Market on Capitol Hill. Mortadella, on the other hand, “is very versatile.”
“You can slice it thin for a charcuterie plate or slice it thick and fry it up and get it nice and crispy,“ he said. “It has a nice, bouncy texture and fatty mouthfeel. Sometimes, the humblest of food can bring you love and joy.”
Now that mortadella is having a moment, Flint may reintroduce his favorite sandwich at Melrose Market soon.
For some more elevated versions, check out my three favorite mortadella sandwiches in Seattle below — plus some honorable mentions and tips for making your own.
Tivoli: on focaccia
$16; 730 N. 34th St. (Fremont), Seattle; 206-535-6054, tivoliseattle.com
This is owner Yasuaki Saito’s homage to the tastiest mortadella sandwich he had in Milan, at the sandwich shop All’Antico Vinaio. Tivoli’s fresh-baked focaccia, specked with sesame seeds, gets layered with a spread of toasted pistachio, shallots, honey, thyme, chili flakes and salt. Saito pairs this “savory umami nut butter” with a dollop of whipped ricotta to give this sandwich a nutty, honey-sweet ping to balance the pork saltiness of the meat.
Willmott’s Ghost: on sourdough
$18; 2100 Sixth Ave. (Denny Triangle), Seattle; 206-900-9650, willmottsghost.com
This cheffy take holds many loud personalities: the mortadella, tangy sourdough toast, tart lemony mayo and some rich and salty ingredients. On paper, it looks like a five-car collision waiting to happen. But in the hands of chef Colin Penttinen, this sandwich sings. The housemade sourdough slices are toasted to give the surface a thin-eggshell crackle to contrast with the spongy bread interior. That sourdough base gets stacked with five gossamer slices of folded mortadella and a heap of lemony aioli, provolone and some briny olive tapenade.
Nomadic Wine Dispensary: on schiacciata
$18; 700 Broadway E., Suite A (Capitol Hill), Seattle; 206-656-7707, nomadicseattle.com
This mortadella sandwich is served on schiacciata, a Florentine flatbread that’s like a thinner, crispier version of focaccia. The decadent spread of stracciatella (the fresh mozzarella and creamy filling in a burrata cheese) doubles as an adhesive to keep a bed of crushed pistachios in place for a consistently nutty, creamy, porky bite. The sandwich is fortified with peppery arugula bathed with olive oil and dusted with salt and pepper, though you really don’t need the greens. The sandwich at this wine bar pairs well with a glass of Badia a Coltibuono chianti classico.
Honorable mentions
Before mortadella sammies got so popular, you could hack your own at Carrello on Capitol Hill. Its housemade mortadella is served as part of a charcuterie plate, but you can request a whole plate of mortadella and assemble your own sandwich with an order of fresh-baked focaccia. Carrello’s mortadella isn’t adulterated with many spices, so you get a clean taste of garlicky pork on spongy, fresh bread that’s been grilled over charcoal. This DIY hack still holds up as one of the best mortadella sandwiches in the city.
The cheapest mortadella sandwich I found is the $13 version at Stumbletown on Northwest 65th Street. This excellent ciabatta version currently only makes cameos as part of the restaurant’s rotating lineup, but the sandwich shop says to expect a return engagement soon.
And I’ll count the Roman-style pizza at Sacro Bosco in this roundup, because this is essentially an open-faced sandwich. It’s a thin, airy flatbread crust stacked with a medley of mozzarella, Parm and fontina, pistachio pesto, creamy stracciatella and shingled with mortadella slices. It’s not currently on the menu, but expect it to return as a rotating special — and head baker Wood plans to add a true mortadella sandwich to the dinner menu soon.
Make your own
To make your own mortadella sandwich, assemble it like you would the classic bologna sandwich, swapping American cheese for provolone. Many restaurants fancy it with ricotta or stracciatella and hot honey, but it also goes well with just mayo and extra-virgin olive oil. (The late Anthony Bourdain preferred mustard in his mortadella sandwich.)
Rain Shadow Meats makes some of the region’s best mortadella, seasoned with cinnamon, mace, coriander, cayenne peppers and globs of fatback. This version is so meaty and dense that if you roll the slice and chomp on it, you get a bouncy, snappy bite as if you had bitten into a hot dog. (It’s also great with a glass of Lambrusco.) Rain Shadow sells mortadella for $24.99 a pound, but you only need four slices (less than an ounce) for a hearty sandwich.
Local gourmet shops and Italian delis serve variations with pistachios, truffles and olives — or, for a really cheap sandwich, hit Big John’s PFI in the Central District, which sells odds and ends of a mortadella roll for around $2-$3 in its discounted bin, located in the back cooler. The truffle mortadella is also a much-sought-after deli meat there.
Tan Vinh: 206-515-5656 or tvinh@seattletimes.com. Tan Vinh is a food writer for The Seattle Times and the host of “Seattle Eats with Tan Vinh,” a podcast from KUOW and The Times.
Dining and Cooking