Oliver’s Corner Butcher Shop in Great Falls will celebrate its first birthday next month. For almost that long, it’s been one of my favorite Instagram accounts to follow. As a meat lover, I get a thrill like no other seeing the shop’s unusual wares like ponzu-dry-aged duck, hard-to-find cuts of local pork from Autumn Olive Farms, and creative sausages. But my favorite posts come on Tuesday and Thursday. Those are the days that the shop offers some of the most appealing sandwiches I’ve seen served in NoVA.
But given my schedule, it’s been a challenge to make a visit to The Ham Bar, as it’s known, a reality. I’ve even gotten to the shop, only to find that an hour after the sandwich was announced on Instagram, it was already sold out. That day, a butcher told me to reserve my sandwich as soon as it was posted. Excellent advice. I was able to pick up my lunch an hour after calling it in.
Each Tuesday and Thursday, The Ham Bar offers a different sandwich. I lucked into a repeat of one called the Italian Stallion. Often, the meats are cut and cured in-house, but this one featured a pair of pork products imported from Italy: mortadella and hot soppressata. Tucked into a crusty-but-chewy baguette, the flavorful meats would be enough on their own. But the star of the show turned out to be porchetta-flavored Duke’s mayonnaise. Huh? The mayo included everything that a chef would normally use to flavor the pork roll, including licorice-like fennel, illuminating lemon zest, garlic, and red pepper flakes. Given the opportunity, I would buy it by the tub. And it didn’t just flavor the meat. There was also a thick layer of chopped lettuce and basil that worked with the mayonnaise to create an unusually fresh-tasting take on the Italian sub.
The bad news is that Oliver’s Corner Butcher Shop isn’t really a restaurant. That means that there are no chips or cases filled with drinks. So prepare ahead and bring your own, or sip one of the craft beers for sale. Next time I see a social media sandwich I can’t resist, I know I will.
9912 VA-193, Unit 102C, Great Falls
Feature image by Alice Levitt
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