Dear friends, prepare to be outraged: [link] The headline: The Best Muffuletta Ever Is Far From New Orleans — and Free of Meat. The subhead: A New Orleans native re-creates the iconic sandwich's flavor with mushrooms, mayonnaise, and more riffs.

Helen Rosner is appropriately horrified on Bluesky, but I'm not sure if her posts are public or not. [link]

You know, I am mellowing in my old age or something but I'm not mad at it. I think calling it "best" is ridiculous but I think calling it a muffaletta is fine (edited to clarify: pending verification that the bread and olive content and general taste are acceptable) and I would be interested in tasting one. $98 for a whole seems like a lot, but in SF in this day and age when everything seems to cost more than I would think perhaps not.

That said, Helen is absolutely correct

I'm irritated by it, but I am also tired.

I am way more horrified by that $98 price tag than by any of the ingredients. Are the mushrooms imported from a boutique hobbit farm in Middle Earth??

I mean, Haight-Ashbury, so maybe

And while the $98 seems high, $15 for 1/8 seems reasonable to me, (although while eating 1/8 of a muffaletta does make sense I somehow feel like selling less than a quarter is not right) so I don't even know

I'd eat it, which, to me, is the most important part. I read the article but missed the $98 pricetag... is that, like, the whole round, but then he divides it up to sell? Ain't no sandwich, muffaleta or not, that I'm paying $98 for unless it comes with a... something I actually want, not what I was about to type, but I think you get my meaning.

At the beach for a couple of days visiting my aunt. Rest and relaxation, yay.

1/8 muffuletta for $14.50 ($98 for a massive 12-inch round sandwich

I checked my local favorite muffaletta substitute and it's $18 for what looks to me like approximately the same volume of sandwich I would expect from a quarter muffaletta, which might be less than a 12-inch round. Trying to imagine all those comparisons is not something I'm going to be able to do accurately. But I feel like $50 for a muffaletta is reasonable, and maybe actually low because my sense of what is reasonable is probably wrong, and double for being in San Francisco is to be expected? IDK

$14.50 doesn't seem outrageous for a try-size mushroom, cheese, and olive salad sandwich, though the mayo would ward me off effectively regardless. I think I'll be sticking with my certainty that Central Grocery's are the best.

Muffaletta-loid. Or -lite.