Where All’Antico Vinaio opens, a long line follows.Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
Where a new All’Antico opens, a long line follows. Mazzanti is adept at social media, and the photogenic sandwiches — rectangles of dimpled bread oozing cream and stuffed with folds of thin-sliced meat — lend themselves to viral buzz and breathless videos. That the Boston shop offered free sandwiches to its first 500 customers probably didn’t hurt in getting the ball rolling.
The foundation of each sandwich at All’Antico Vinaio is schiacciata, a Tuscan flatbread that resembles a slimmed-down, slightly crisper focaccia. Staffers split big, rectangular loaves of this bread down the middle, releasing clouds of steam. From this effect comes a shop motto: “Bada come la fuma,” or “Watch how it smokes.” Broken down into sandwich-size slabs, the bread is filled with meats and cheeses imported from Italy and sliced to order, as well as creams flavored with truffles, artichoke, pistachio, porcini. There is a menu of about 20, with names such as La Favolosa (The Fabulous), La Golosa (The Greedy), La Toscana, La Genovese. A Boston special includes porchetta, taleggio, and pumpkin cream. The sandwiches cost $13-$19 and they are substantial; two people could easily split one and be full.
Bada come la fuma! Marco Brandi of All’Antico Vinaio holds the steaming schiacciata.Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
The original All’Antico Vinaio is in Florence’s historic center, near the Palazzo Vecchio, and lines spill from its awninged entrance out onto the busy, charming Via dei Neri. All’Antico Vinaio means, essentially, “at the old wine merchant.” This, perhaps, all felt more quaint in the days when we couldn’t watch a food-bro influencer tell us all about it, man-on-the-street style, from the comfort of our own homes. But here we are. Can the charm translate to the comfort of our own cities, to a Back Bay lunch break one might be able to view as a mini-vacation if one squinted real hard?
Well, no. It is not the same. But it has a multitude of adjacent virtues. While it continues to blow my mind that people are not only willing but want to wait in long lines to experience the latest trendy foodstuff, and then move on to the next one and do the same all over again, here I felt a bit of the draw. In front of me was a man with a handsome brown dog. “That’s Bruno,” the man introduced us. “He likes coming here.” Seated at tables in the narrow, white-walled shop, shortly after the doors opened at 10:30 on a weekday morning, people were drinking bright red spritz cocktails in big goblets. “No, I’m not Italian. Everybody thinks I’m Italian but I’m Portuguese,” a woman told the guys at the next table over, who had inquired. “Close enough,” they declared magnanimously. “The Paradiso is my favorite sandwich,” a man in an overcoat confided to the people in line beside him. A neighborhood sandwich shop will always feel like a neighborhood sandwich in the end, even when its denizens have gathered from far and wide.
Sandwiches rest atop the counter at All’Antico Vinaio.Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
At the front of the line, the staffers were speaking Italian. Stacks of schiacciata waited on the counter behind them. Two employees sliced bread and slathered spreads from a case where roasted eggplant and sundried tomatoes, arugula and basil, and creamy stracciatella cheese and bright white orbs of fresh mozzarella were on display. Between the two workers was the meat slicer, where a man turned haunches of dry-cured ham into feathery, delicate pink slices thin enough to see through. Onto the bread went the cheeses, the herbs, the vegetables, the meats; once wrapped and labeled, the sandwiches were handed over, and there was just time to pull a Sicilian mandarin soda from the case and pluck up a bag of biscotti before paying.
Choosing what to order at All’Antico Vinaio is a challenge, because all of the sandwiches are similar, and yet no matter which ones or how many you order, there’s still a sense of FOMO. I didn’t get L’Italiana, but the gentleman behind me did, and now I understand my error because how did I not see that prosciutto, pistachio cream, stracciatella, sundried tomato, and arugula was the perfect combination until just now? Or maybe in fact La Paradiso was even perfecter, with its mortadella, stracciatella, pistachio cream, and pistachio.
The staff makes sandwiches at All’Antico Vinaio.Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
“No wrong answers” is the right answer. But in my limited experience, All’Antico Vinaio’s simpler creations are its most successful. I first sampled La Favolosa, the one sandwich I knew I wanted to try: To me, the combination of salame Toscano, pecorino cream, artichoke cream, and spicy eggplant was a siren song. (Put the word “artichoke” in a menu description and I am helpless.) I was surprised to find I didn’t love it. It was too heavy with its double creams, its competing flavors. I preferred La Genovese, a brushstroke of stracciatella with tomatoes, pesto, crushed pistachios, and basil; the milky, herbal, and nutty flavors were fresh and complementary, even if I’m still spoiled for tomatoes with the proximity of season’s end. But my favorite was La Schiacciata del Boss, a streamlined sandwich of prosciutto, pecorino, and truffle cream. The prosciutto was delicate, the pecorino pungent, and the truffle cream woodsy and fragrant, working its way into the crannies of the bread; naught else was needed.
Technique matters almost as much as quality of ingredients. The constant crush of customers does All’Antico Vinaio no favors when it comes to sandwich construction. I watched a sandwich maker frantically saw off thick, uneven planks of pecorino with a knife and wished I had a cheese slicer in my back pocket to hand her. In online videos and photos of the shop’s sandwiches, the delicate meats are tucked gently and airily into the bread, creating loose folds for eggplant chunks and pesto to get lost in. Indeed, when a friend coincidentally sent me a photo of herself eating lunch at an All’Antico Vinaio in Italy the previous week, that’s just how her sandwich looked. In mine, the meats were smushed somewhat unceremoniously, melding into a dense, flat layer. It’s more of a challenge to make a sandwich with love when all of those customers are waiting.
Then, too, we have no shortage of excellent Italian sandwiches in Boston. The delis of the North End — places like Salumeria Italiana and Bricco Salumeria — are similarly stocked with fine meats and cheeses imported from Italy.
But those sandwiches are in the North End, and East Boston, and Hyde Park, and Medford, and Revere. … They aren’t in the Back Bay, and they don’t come on schiacciata, and no one serving them has ever exhorted you with sincere glee, “Bada come la fuma!”
For this experience, there is only one place in town.
565 Boylston St., Back Bay, Boston, 857-226-0026, www.allanticovinaiousa.com
Devra First can be reached at devra.first@globe.com. Follow her on Instagram @devrafirst.
Dining and Cooking