In the 80s, the East Village had this memorable Sicilian sandwich shop on First Avenue called Brunetta’s, somewhere around 6th Street, later moving to 11th. It had a front window that featured a burner under a squarish reservoir of bubbling oil, in which the cook fried slices of spleen and caciocavallo cheese.
He would use these along with fluffy white ricotta and a small round roll to make a sandwich called vastedda. It was like being in Palermo, at the kind of snack and sandwich shop known as a focacceria. There were probably five places that made these sandwiches, the rest in Brooklyn.
