This Modest Deli Meat Is Taking Fancy Restaurants by Storm

In the 1971 comedy Lady Liberty, Sophia Loren arrives in the U.S. carrying mortadella from the Italian factory where she worked. When a customs official stops her, she refuses to give up the sausage and gets quarantined at the airport. A special agent arrives, pulls out a pocketknife to sample it, and soon enough, it’s all gone. The Italian name of the film? La Mortadella.

In the decades since, the cured meat has often been confused with mass-market bologna, which has a similar dull pink hue. If you’ve ever avoided a slice of olive-studded sandwich meat on a deli platter, it was probably also labeled mortadella.