Last week we reported on the newest, hottest line in town: the sandwich line, courtesy of the Mazzanti family. In Florence, Italy, people wait on hours-long lines for sandwiches at their All'antico Vinaio shops, and now through July 13th, you can partake in this delicious madness right here in NYC. Tommaso Mazzanti (who pretty much runs things these days) has brought a pop-up All'antico Vinaio to town—it's being run out of Otto in Greenwich Village, and unsurprisingly, the shop saw immediate lines upon opening last week.
We swung by today to check out the scene and found a sidewalk line curling around the corner. Mazzanti has departed NYC for now, leaving Gaetano Arnone (Executive Chef at Otto) in charge; he told Gothamist on Monday, "The lines have has wrapped around and gone all the way down to Washington Square Park. [In Florence] these guys get lines that are whole city blocks. When the news went out that they were coming, it was an immediate response."
Arnone notes they've been selling around 400 sandwiches a day in around 3 hours; "We start at noon, and are out of bread entirely at 2:30 or 3 o’clock."
(Scott Lynch / Gothamist)
Do the sandwiches hold up to their Italian counterparts? Arnone says, "We’ve done a lot of work to make sure that the ingredients are accurate as possible, they flew their baker out to show us how to make the bread, especially to their recipe. We’ve made some of the stuff here in-house, or we’ve sourced out the things that are closest to their Tuscan recipes." He believes that when customers here "take their first bite... they’re going right back to that vacation, to memories, when they were studying, or in their youth."
The line inside on Monday. (Adwait Patil / Gothamist)
Anna Brill, from Brooklyn, was on line earlier today and told us she had been to the sandwich shop in Florence before with one of her friends, "So when we heard about it, we had to come." She says she heard about it through a little ol' website called Gothamist—"Anyone who reads Gothamist is going to be here, that’s how I found it," she told us.
Addie Plowman, also from NYC, says she stopped by Saturday but was unable to get a sandwich, so returned today. "We waited on line for 40 minutes, and when we got right up, to get to order, they said they ran out of bread." Pro tip: get there well before noon if you want one of these.
All'antico Vinaio is located within Otto, at One Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street, through July 13th.
Additonal reporting from Adwait Patil.
