Ambling with Spouse and Spawn through Stockbridge in Edinburgh, a picturesque neighbourhood of exquisitely groomed small dogs, charity shops selling collectible vinyl and purveyors of traditional limewash in custom tints, we stopped for lunch at Mootz General Store, which is not a general store. It’s a sandwich shop with a pretty straightforward premise. They bake schiacciata, a Tuscan bread similar to focaccia, with a crisp, salty crust and a fluffy interior, and they sell it with a limited number of sandwich fillings, ranging from classic to unexpected. All three of us opted for the signature sandwich, the ‘Mootz’, and we opted for ‘large’, which turns out to mean ‘a substantial loaf of bread split down the middle’. I will say that it wants to be big at that price, because I recently had some of the best pasta I’ve ever eaten in a British restaurant for the same money. The ‘Mootz’ is filled with mortadella, stracciatella, pistachio pesto and crushed pistachios, and we all opted for hot honey, which is available for free with every filling. It was a great combination of flavours and textures. Mortadella sausage with pistachio is a no-brainer, as pistachio mortadella is a thing (and a very nice thing, too), but the stracciatella was a great idea, as it provides a kind of sauce, like a stringy, creamy, fresh-tasting mayo-substitute to bring the whole construction together. The hot honey was, well, honey, but it was surprisingly nice to have a bit of sweetness running through it, and the bread was a perfect vehicle, combining absorbency, springiness, easy eating and structural integrity. We sat on a table outside to eat, but it would have been an easy sandwich to eat on the hoof, despite its enormous size. Definitely one of the best sandwiches I’ve eaten.
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