“Here,” said chef Gaetano DiBenedetto, as he handed me what looked like a pale pink rose. It was mortadella, cut very thin, folded a few times into delicate leaves, most unlike the pale brownish sausage flecked with fat that’s usually the last thing eaten off a deli party tray. I didn’t recognize the mortadella at first: it was so good and so unlike other versions of this sausage that I’ve had.

Equally unlike what I’d had in the past was the submarine sandwich I gobbled down at Gaetano’s Artisan Foods, a small, old-fashioned market occupying the space that, pre-pandemic, was a sit-down restaurant but now offers superb Italian dry goods and deli items.