A very Richmond pasta salad recipe
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Here's a Richmond-inspired pasta salad recipe that will make you a summer cookout hero.
What's happening: Sandwich-shop serendipity.
- A friend brought a deli meat-laced pasta salad to my birthday barbecue last weekend.
- It was delicious and instantly familiar.
Why it matters: Unbeknownst to her, the recipe from a food blogger she follows on Instagram was inspired by the Italian grinder at Pop's Market on Grace, God rest its soul.
Flashback: I used to live above Pop's Market and ate the Italian grinder all the time.
- Well, Pop's closed, and I moved. (Coincidence?)
- But last summer, the shop's Italian grinder exploded into the national consciousness by way of an ultra-viral TikTok.
- In it, Gray Fultz gave viewers a chaotic walk-through of how her boyfriend, Pop's founder Josh Wright, makes the sandwich.
Most importantly, Fultz and Wright introduced the world to the key ingredient responsible for the whole assembly's je ne sais quoi.
- They call it grinder salad, and it consists of iceberg lettuce, onion and pepperoncini tossed in a runny mix of vinegar, mayonnaise and a few key herbs and spices.
Reality check: It's truly a delicious sandwich, but it calls for 21 ingredients.
- There was no chance I was ever going to make it at home.
But, but, but: Amid the recipe's viral spread, a food blogger adapted a more approachable pasta salad version, seizing on one of the formerly secret grinder-salad techniques.
- And, crucially for me, last week a friend spotted it and — totally unaware of the Richmond connection and my love for the sandwich that inspired it — brought it to my birthday party.
The bottom line: It's crisp, spicy, and you and your friends will love it, with or without an emotional connection to a long-gone sandwich shop.
Here's the recipe via Foodsofjane.