Pfft. By this logic you're still eating a sandwich if you throw away the bread and simply eat the cold cuts.
If you never bother to put the cold cuts between bread, then I suppose you have a point. It's really something else at that point.
But if you buy a sandwich and fail to eat the bread, how is that not still a sandwich, just one eaten in a peculiar manner?
An open face sandwich is still a sandwich. Even if all you do is eat the meat and gravy and leave the bread.
Damn. Now I want an open face sammich and mashed taters.
I say if
you
remove the olive salad and then eat the muffaletta, you are eating a muffaletta.
However, if you remove the olive salad and then give the sandwich to someone else, you are not giving them a muffaletta. You are giving them a nameless sandwich.
It makes sense to me.
I'd say that a muffaletta without the olives is still a muffaletta. The bread really defines it more than the olives do -- the olives are just customary. (Hmm. The bread is both neccesary and sufficient. The olives are not neccesary; are they sufficient? The meat is neither neccesary nor sufficient.)
I would now actually sell a kidney for a Central Grocery muffaletta.
I mean, I don't even like olives!
(...and we've gone full circle.)
I don't like kidneys on my muffaletta.
If you have kidneys on your muffaletta, I don't think you actually have a muffaletta.
Going to eat dinner.