Orlando’s Deli serves up a winner

Bill San Antonio

The chicken cutlet vodka panini Joe Spagna has served at Orlando’s Deli in Manhasset for more than a decade has been a hit with customers looking for something different on their sandwich.

It is now a hit with critics, too.

The trade publication Restaurant-Hospitality Magazine selected Orlando Deli’s sandwich from thousands of entries as the best panini in America in its annual food rankings.

“It was really exciting because all of a sudden I got four copies of the magazine in the mail and later I got another special copy from them, and the cover’s got four pictures of these sandwiches and I think, well, I guess we didn’t win,” Spagna said. “Then I flip through and there’s my sandwich, right there, as one of the best in the country.”

“I would have loved to have been on the cover, but oh well,” he added. “Maybe next time.”

Spagna entered the contest on a whim in late June, submitting a detailed recipe for his special a la vodka sauce so Restaurant-Hospitality editors could replicate the sandwich for a taste test.

The magazine profile features a photograph of the sandwich as well as its key ingredients and several “honorable mentions” of other paninis from across the country.

“We’ve been sauced on vodka and eaten plenty of pasta with vodka sauce, and we’ve liked both. We don’t know who thought of splashing vodka into a tomato/cream sauce, but damn if it doesn’t work,” Restaurant-Hospitality judges wrote of Spagna’s panini. “There have to be lots out there who have used vodka sauce for something other than pasta, but we’re not sure who they are. We do know Chef Spagna’s fantastic drunken-chicken cutlet will keep us out of rehab at least one more week.”

Spagna said he first had the idea for the sandwich while dining at a restaurant in Cooperstown, N.Y., that served a corn muffin heated over a panini grill.

Spagna returned home and began toying with unconventional panini ideas on his George Foreman grill, until one day he was cooking penne alla vodka at Orlando’s with a cook who suggested he drench a piece of chicken cutlet in the sauce, pair it with a slice of mozzarella cheese and slide it between two pieces of hero bread and onto the grill.

“It’s a simple sandwich, really,” Spagna said. “We’ve always tried to find something new. We just thought, the chicken is so good with this sauce, let’s put it on a panini.”

The panini has evolved since its inception, Spagna said, with Orlando’s swapping the hero bread with a flat pita.

But the secret to the success of the sandwich, which sells for $7.25, is Spagna’s specialty vodka sauce.

“It’s a combination of cream sauce with vodka and original tomato sauce to give it that pink color,” Spagna said. “As far as I know, nobody else does it that way. Nobody’s thought to put that on a sandwich.”

Orlando’s now has three seasoned grills that Spagna said are used for sandwiches.

With the award in tow, he said, he hopes the grills get fired up pretty often.

“I’ve sold quite a few now and I hope people jump on the wagon and I sell more,” Spagna said. “So many people are interested, it’s like when they come in they’re there to order that panini. I still don’t know if it’s the best sandwich in all of America, but then again, maybe it is.”

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