The family-run grocery store that sells made-to-order sandwiches is a time-honored tradition back East and in the South. There, stopping in for a couple of oranges, a loaf of bread and a glass bottle of milk from a small, locally owned market also can net a fat, grease-slicked sausage sandwich, a pile of tender, still-steaming brisket or thin, hot planks of fried catfish between two slices of white bread, a little paper cup of homemade tartar sauce on the side.
In fact, one of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had didn’t come from a New York deli or a sanitized chain offering 47 variations on the ham and cheese. It came from an old, grime-worn Italian grocery in my hometown of Pittsburgh, in the rough, immigrant-run Strip District. It’s a place as far from the gentrified, yuppie-scale, loft-serving confines of Denver’s gleaming-new Marczyk Fine Foods as a sloppy Joe is from a petit-four.
When I was growing up, Sunseri Brothers was the place to go for a couple of bags of dried pasta, a few plastic containers of olives scooped from giant barrels, a week’s-worth wedge of the only parmigiano-reggiano worth having, and bags of garlic big enough to kill a vampire (or a mugger) by simply whacking him over the head.
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Whatever your shopping needs were, though, you couldn’t walk out without a hefty “visionary,” Sunseri’s name for a self-contained loaf of bread that held in fresh mozzarella, oily roasted peppers, strips of grilled onions and garlic, with fresh parsley and oregano sprinkled all over. It was like eating Tony Soprano’s soul in a sandwich, and it was worth every minute of heartburn thereafter.
The sandwiches are more bistro-style than old-fashioned at Marczyk, but that does not make them any less full of character. They are assembled at the deli in the back of this organics-oriented shop, and they are made from house-smoked fish, imported meats, Niman Ranch beef and the best Boar’s Head cold cuts money can buy.
And for the most part, it takes quite a bit of money to buy the regular grocery foods at Marczyk. But there is no better beef available: steaks of Niman Ranch filet mignon, grilled outside in a snowstorm, were the most delicious, best textured cuts of meat I have ever cooked myself and eaten.
That company’s meat also comes on a rye-encased sandwich in the form of roast beef ($6.95), thinly sliced, swabbed with horseradish sauce, topped with a sharp, authentic Cheddar and possessing the same buttery texture and straightforward flavor with a few leaves of peppery watercress strewn here and there. This is the way beef is supposed to taste.
There isn’t better produce available, either, at least not from the organic or the locally grown lines, such as White Mountain Farms potatoes ($1.50 for a 5-pound bag) from the San Luis Valley, or Colorado-spawned mushrooms – including the funky maitakis ($23.99 a pound) – from Rocky Mt. Shiitake. Most of the rest is California organic, and the prices are in line with those of Whole Foods or Wild Oats.
Where my childhood Sunseri’s had dozens of different types of imported dried pastas and olives, Marczyk’s has fewer, but they are well-chosen. Where we used to be able to get waxy packages of ground Italian coffee, pizzelles made by a nearly hairless, 90-year-old nonna and weird little dried-fruit cookies from Sicily, the options are bulk beans from Vail Mountain Roasters, white truffle honey ($10.09) and beeswax candles ($9.99 for a 72-hour burner).
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But Marczyk does share Sunseri’s habit of offering jars of imported white anchovies ($6.99), burlap bags of risotto ($3.19 a pound) and sauces you won’t find at Safe- way, such as puttanesca and fra diavolo ($6.29 for 32 ounces). But unlike an old Italian grocer, Marczyk offers such disparate items as oversized Armenian sesame-seed cracker bread ($4.50), organic applesauce ($3.39 for 24 ounces) and bulk lentils (99 cents a pound). And there are shelves and shelves of fun little Eastern bloc cookies, every size caper imaginable, top-quality chocolate and frozen slabs of demi-glace in duck, pork and veal flavors.
From those shelves come some of the contents of the grilled veggie sandwich ($6.95), a focaccia suitcase of vinegar-tart caponata (eggplant, anchovies, olives, pine nuts and capers) layered with goat cheese from Colorado’s Haystack Mountain, fresh arugula and housemade basil pesto. Spanish olive oil and sherry vinegar, also from in-house, provide the oomph in a bocadillo sandwich ($5.95), piled high with serrano ham and Manchego cheese.
But my favorite would have to be the Parisian ($5.95), a French baguette sliced on the diagonal, slicked with sweet butter and topped with slices of ham and Brie de Meaux. There’s something about the sweet, the salty, the crunchy and the chewy, presented oh-so-sophisticated with wrapped, imported hard candies, that makes it a habit worth having.
You can get the sandwiches from Marczyk to go (or as part of a boxed lunch for $9.50, which includes a kosher dill, pasta salad, fruit and a cookie), or you can eat them at one of the handful of metal tables in the front of the store.
Led by owners Pete and Barbara Marczyk, staff members are as friendly, helpful and deeply passionate about the store as if they were family.
And isn’t that really what an old-fashioned grocery is all about?
