It’s understandable that a serious panini shop would invest in a Berkel meat slicer. The Ferrari-red paint job is nice enough, but the real beauty is in how the hand-cranked flywheel spins the blade with a slow, steady rotation. A standard deli slicer slices. A Berkel shaves. And the two Berkels at Salumè, a panini shop with only 10 tables? That might be showing off.
But even if the volume at Salumè doesn’t justify the gear, the panini do. The feathery mortadella in the Bologna sandwich ($12) is cut so thin it could melt on a warm plate.
The mortadella is from Italy, as are the prosciutto cotto, prosciutto crudo, culatello and many of the other salumi on offer. The best way to try them is in a meat sampler ($25), named the Giro d’Italia even though the bresaola is from Uruguay. It’s a generous — and gorgeous — composition of cured meats.
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