Lottie & Zula's

Couple of fresh new sides and salads in the deli case for you all.

Two bean salad with corona beans and baby Lima beans, sweet corn, summer squash, rainbow radish, chives and a savory dressing.

Roasted beet salad with arugula, Granny Smith apples, Bulgarian feta, compressed cucumbers, sunflower kernels and an orange tarragon dressing.

We’ve got a catering gig so we’ll be closing it up at 1:30 this afternoon to make that happen. Get here early if you’re looking to get a sandwich or delicious beverage.

We’ve got a new summer side salad hitting the deli case today as well, summer squash and sweet corn two bean salad, we’ve also got the new Buckethead brined chicken and tomato jam sando on the board and a few of the TBD chicken salad grinders left, along with all the usuals.

Doing the breakfast sando and coffee thing all day again.

Changing up our hours a bit to Tuesdays-Saturdays, still going 9am-3pm though.

We’ve also got the new Buckethead chicken breast and tomato jam on the special board and a couple of The Johns, our roast beef and cheddar on marble rye. And don’t sleep on the TBD chicken salad grinder with house harissa, Bulgarian Feta, arugula, watermelon radish and pickled red onions.

We’ll be opening late tomorrow, 11am-3pm.

Then we’ll be taking a long weekend, so we’ll be closed Saturday, Sunday & Monday and be back on Tuesday.

Our New Buckethead chicken & tomato jam sando is now on the menu.

To add some context to yesterday's apology and address the requests for more information as to what happened:

The business relationship with Erica was based on a two part agreement involving a lease with the property landlord for the space where her cart resides and a verbal agreement to use Lottie & Zula's space for storage, refrigeration and as a commissary kitchen with Lottie & Zula’s subsidizing water, electricity, garbage and other utilities at no additional cost to Erica’s lease with the landlord.

In January, before Erica was able to move her cart into the space, Lottie & Zula's was hit with a positive Covid case and forced to close for a short time. Being a new business, still not profitable, changes had to be made to hours and staff schedules to keep the staff safe while retaining their hours as well as operate the restaurant towards a break even. Opening 7 days a week was the best option and given the size of the restaurant with a seperate prep kitchen, the assumption that Erica would be able to continue to use the facilities.

Over the next few months, the arrangement appeared to be working for all parties, as interactions were positive and collaborations were mutually agreeable.

In May, we collaborated again on a meatloaf sandwich. A financial agreement was not formalized first, and it was different from previous collabs in that we were not donating proceeds to charity. An uncomfortable conversation ensued about compensation after the fact, followed by a text thread which began as a $74 offer to Erica for meatloaf. Erica replied that’s what she came up with and payment was sent to her through Venmo. She later responded that $74 was not adequate as it covered only the cost to make the meatloaf. An additional $26 was Venmoed with a request to talk in person to ensure the final compensation was agreeable. That request was declined.

Over the next couple of days and into weeks, amid a now tense atmosphere, more attempts were made to initiate a conversation to resolve the tension and misunderstanding with regards to the collaboration. Erica expressed that she was busy, did not want to talk about it at that time, and she needed space.
cont. below

I want to address our situation with Erica’s Soul Food and Erica herself. I am truly sorry. It hurts to know that my actions, or inactions have made her feel the way they have. I have made a lot of mistakes in my life, not always lived up to my word and not always acted in a way that is congruent with the morals and ideals I feel are important. I want to learn, and grow from these mistakes and take this opportunity to be a better person and run a business that is a benefit to the entire community. I am deeply saddened by this and want to put my best foot forward so I can grow, learn, and act in a way that lives up to my own ideals, and the standards that our community expects from me and this business.

SOLD OUT.

Back at it tomorrow.

Well, here we go with the good news and part two of the turkey saga.

This is not a turkey sandwich, it’s our new chicken breast sandwich that is going to be taking the place of the Geoff while we wait for turkey breasts to come back to the universe.

Haven’t come up with a name for it yet, but here’s the lowdown.

6oz of thick sliced chicken breast that have been brined and cooked sousvide, topped with mozzarella and Swiss cheeses, and steamed to warm the meat and melt the cheese. Tomato jam, , Dijon mustard, red onion, shredduce & celery salt on toasted sour dough bread.

It’s a pretty similar build to the ol’ Geoff, just a bit more on the summer side of things with a slightly sweet tomato jam in place of the cranberry sauce.

I think we really nailed the chicken breast, brined with garlic, lemons and peppercorns and then cooked with miso schmaltz for 4 hours in a water bath. It’s just really savory and plays super well with the tomato jam.

Looks like we’ve got a day or two left on the Geoff, and then this yet to be named chicken sando will be on the menu. If the Geoff has been your thing, I’m pretty sure this’ll fill the void.

Got kind of a good news, bad news situation here. Going to make this a two parter, we’ll go bad news first.

The ol’ Geoffrey, our turkey, bacon & Swiss sandwich is going on sabbatical for the next who knows how long, maybe until the new year, maybe be back sooner.

Not too long ago an avian flu hit the farmed turkey population and a lot of good turkeys were lost. Couple that loss with labor shortages in meat packing and production facilities, the upcoming thanksgiving and christmas holidays, and the time it takes to raise a turkey, bam perfect storm. Producers have decided to divert most, if not all turkeys for the foreseeable future into whole birds for the holidays, hence, might not have turkey breasts for us to cook for a while.

It’s a bummer to have to take this one off the menu, it’s our second best selling sando, we had just reworked our process on cooking turkey breasts and they really came out awesome. More flavor, great texture, all the things.

So the Geoff will be around for a bit longer, we have a couple turkey breasts left and will keep it on til we run out, most likely over the weekend some time.

When the Geoff is no more, we’ve got a pretty solid replacement in the works. We made a couple today, had the staff all give em a try and everyone here seems pretty happy with the results.

In part two of this epic saga, we’ll get into the nitty gritty of what’s taking Geoff’s place until turkey comes back online.

See you all this weekend.

So here’s the plan, this one (TBD Chicken Salad Grinder) is back on the special board Thursday and Friday along the the last handful of Johns.

Then we are taking the weekend off.

So, we’ll be closed this weekend, Saturday and Sunday for a little R&R for the crew that has been working and more time to recuperate for those team members that are down with the sickness.

That means you’ve got 2 more days to come in and get what you get, try something new or walk through the doors for the first time. Then we break.

When we come back we’ll have be debuting a new turkey breast recipe that’s going to be awesome, we’re switching over to Mary’s brand Turkey breasts, changing up the brine and messing with our process a bit.

We’ll also be dropping our new Frigola & Soft Egg salad in the deli case and will have a new bean salad following right quick afterwords.

Hopefully we see you all before the weekend, and if not we’ll see you after.

Thanks for an awesome week so far, despite the setbacks, thanks for all the support, see you all soon.

The rollercoaster ride continues. Four of us have negative PCR tests and are feeling good and ready to make you all some sandwiches today.

Sandwiches like this here Geoff, turkey, bacon and Swiss with cranberry sauce, Dijon mustard, red onion and shredduce on toasted sour dough bread.

Lunch starts at 10:30, breakfast all day with coffee, canned cocktails, beer on tap and in the deli cooler, tons of NA options including house sodas, iced tea and our juices named after famous juicers.

We’ve also got a banging selection of sides, potato salad, pasta salad, purple barley salad, Utz, Zapp’s & Tim’s potato chips, Lottie & Zula’s hot sauces, & desserts.

Oh, we’ve got stickers too, everywhere, tons and tons of stickers.

See you all soon.

Had to close early again today due to another positive test result with a team member.

I totally get how frustrating this is for many of you, and we want to keep our doors open more than anyone. Slinging sandos & delicious beverages is our lively hood, and what pays the bills for us and our staff, so we don’t take closing the doors in the middle of a busy service lightly.

We will do our best to update the google and the social medias as quickly as we can when these things happen, but getting our staff tested and ensuring their safety and health is our top priority, and in todays case, took president over social media.

In the 21 months we’ve been open, this is by far the most stressful time I can remember, for myself, my sister and our staff. We’re seeing huge growth week over week, month over month and we’re putting out the best food and beverages we ever have, it’s heartbreaking to have to close the doors and make these decisions, but in the end it’s what’s best for us, and the people who work here, and we can’t do any of this without them. My concern for their health and well-being will always be the driving force for the decisions we make here.

On a positive note, negative PCR tests are rolling in for the rest of the team. We have been wearing masks, and making responsible choices and that makes me hopeful we can get the doors back open, maybe as early as tomorrow.

We’re back doing the thing today and we’ve got the John Cock-toes-ton Roast Beef sandwich back too.

Been a bit of a rollercoaster ride the past couple of days for us here, we’ve still got a couple of team members out recovering but the rest of us have negative PCR tests and are excited to be making sandwiches and drinks and all the things.

We’ll have our usual breakfast offerings all day long today, lunch starts at 10:30. Front sidewalk seating and covered patio are open, AC inside, high quality music will be playing, coffee from great beer and NA beverage selection, and of course, house canned cocktails. Come on by, see you all soon.

We’re super bummed to say that we just don’t have the staff to open up today.

I’ll be in the shop so we can fulfill breakfast orders that came in overnight and I’ll be putting together grab-n-go Ricottis & sides for that’ll be available after 11am.

We’ve got a new pasta salad we’ve been working on that will be at Wellspent today. If you haven’t been to Wellspent Market yet on 10th & Couch, head that way today, they have tons of great pantry items, snacks, an amazing beverage selection, flowers & plants, they carry our Italian Grinder in their grab-n-go fridge on Thursdays-Saturdays along with our side salads and a ton of other great culinarily minded things.

We’ll keep you posted about when we can open back up as we figure it all out.

Truth be told I’m not really a steak and cheese or meatball grinder kind of person. I’d never turn down a sandwich, but when presented with a menu of choices, it’s not usually the direction I go.

For me these were some of the most difficult sandwiches to get right, but also some of the most fun to work on since I didn’t have such a defined idea of what I thought they should be, other than really good sandos.

These two were pretty much developed side by side, I knew I needed somewhere for the fat and trimmings from the beef roasts to go and meatballs are such a clutch part of most New England grinder shops, and a way to utilize bread scraps, so I worked on them together.

If I had a “thing” in the kitchen, a defining characteristic of how I cook, it’s trying to coax as much flavor out of things as possible, trying to make the beefiest tasting steak, or chicken soup that tastes like you’re eating a whole roast chicken.

So that’s where I headed with these two. Try and just keep things simple and pinpoint the flavors and textures that really define each sandwich, and amplify those things as much as possible without turning them into gastronomic monstrosities of look at all the fancy s**t I can do and throw at these things.

We definitely take some extra steps with these, like dehydrating the charred onions to season the charred onions with, rendering the beef fat to sear the sliced beef roasts in, adding a couple different cheeses to the steak sandwich at different times to really drive home both texture and flavor and making a mornay sauce with a base of onions, bay leaf, star anise and red pepper flake to up the beef flavor in the meatballs.

In the end though, it’s all just really about making something delicious that stands on its own without all the hype and talk about where it came from and what temperature we sous-vided the beef roast at.

Lottie & Zula’s is a simple place doing something that hundreds or thousands of people have done before us and will hopefully continue to do after, making good sandwiches.

We take a lot of pride in what we do, and we hope it shows, but in the end we’re just out here making classic, simple sandos.

See you soon.

We have enough negative tests that we’ll be back open today, we’ll just be a little short staffed for the next bit.

Online ordering will be touch and go until we get the whole crew back in, so if you take to the interwebs to place an order and see it’s offline, give us a call or just come on down.

Thanks ahead of time for your patience, look forward to seeing you all.

Had to close due to a positive test in the team. We’ll all be testing and figuring out when we can get back at it, more as we figure it out.

We’re back with all the usual things, Ricottis, Geoffs, Pastrami Reubens, Morty Melts and the rest of our regularly scheduled menu items.

The John (roast beef) and our new chicken salad grinder will be back up later in the week.

SOLD OUT

That’s it for us for the day, and we’ll be closed tomorrow so everyone can get some rest.

Thanks for a killer week and past couple of months.

We’ll see you all back here on Tuesday.

-Lottie & Zula’s

Now Playing and

Joe Bataan’s Salsoul, some groovy Latin Jazz for your morning ritual with a Spinach Bae breakfast sando on a Bolo Levedo and a tall cup of

Record shop is open all day today and breakfast and coffee available all day as well. Lunch starts at 10:30.

We’re all here til 3pm, digging through records, listening to music, slinging Sammie’s and canning cocktails.

Just a little heads up, we’re closed on Monday this coming week, so come by and see us before then.

We’ve been talking about and working on this chicken salad grinder for a minute now. I think we finally nailed it so we’re going to drop it on the specials board and see what you all think.

Smoked chicken breasts with a house made harissa are the base for our chicken salad. Pickled red onions and watermelon radish spun on the shoestring jammer add some acid and crunch, with Bulgarian feta rounding the whole thing out. It’s got some spice to it, not over the top, but just enough to get your mouth watering.

This little number should be a great warm weather addition to our grinder selection.

Our roast beef sliced bread sandwich the John Cock-toas-ton is on the special board this week. House roast beef, cheddar, crunchy onions, blah, blah blah, it’s delicious and you should come by for one.

Also we’ll be closing a bit early today, at 2pm, so we can get some plumbing things fixed before they become major issues, so get here before 2 if you want to get yourself a John.

Finally, just a heads up we will be closed Monday the 4th so everyone can have a day with friends and family.

Thanks to everyone out there coming by and picking up sandwiches, beverages and records and checking out the spot. We really do appreciate you all.

This weekend we’ve got the Gabagood Morning on special.

Our very own Eli Page () came up with this one.

Toasted Bolo with seared coppa steak, a fried egg, giardinera, provolone and american cheeses. It a breakfast type thing, so this one will be available all day long, starting at 9:00am.

SOLD OUT.

We’re done early today cause we ain’t got no more food for you all.

Thanks for a great last couple of weeks, months in fact. It’s been a marathon and we couldn’t be happier to be so busy.

We’re hiring some more staff to keep up and adjusting our pars and bread orders so we can keep the doors open for you all, again, thanks a ton, we appreciate you all.

Today is Part 2 of and has some fresh picks for you all today and we’ve got sandwiches and beers to fuel your marathon record digging.

There are a ton of great record shops all over town for you to visit today, and our neighborhood has a couple of em like right across the street from us, .music down the way on MLK and the famous Mississippi Records on Albina.

Here we have a couple favorites of mine, The Sciences and our Al Bundy Mortadella Melt that’ll put you to sleep if you dare take a seat on the couch afterwords. Wash it all down with a delicious from the small but mighty state of Rhode Island, then get back out there and grab some vinyl from your favorite independent shop.

Hope to see you all out and about today.

A couple of 12” grinders about to get their lids and all wrapped up.

Our Operation Plunder Dome meatball grinder and The Underhill steak, peppers, onions and cheese grinder.

That is all.

Our Turkey, Bacon & Swiss sandwich is named after one of my favorite sandwich shops in Providence, RI. Geoff's Superlative Sandwiches]]]]

I ate two sandwiches religiously there for years, The J***s and The Susan Farmer. our Geoff is a riff of of their J***s.

Now, a couple of things really stand out Geoff's Superlative Sandwiches]]]] First you can’t not mention their pickles. At their old Thayer Street & Benefit spots that I would frequent they had a bucket of the best half sours I’ve ever had that you could munch on while in line. Don’t know if they still do it, but legendary.

Second, they would steam the meat and cheese in these cool pressure steamers with a hand operated steam valve, it melted the cheese perfectly and warmed the meat up just enough the bring out the flavor. That forever changed my mind about how a proper sandwich is made.

Looking back now, I guess I started really going to the Geoff's Superlative Sandwiches]]]] on Thayer when I was 13 or 14, early nineties. It was a consistent spot I went to til I was 22 or twenty three and moved out west. One summer when I was living in Providence I lived 2 or 3 blocks from the Geoff’s on Benefit Street, crushed pickles and sandwiches 5, 6 times a week.

Didn’t really realize how much of a thing this place was for me til I was asked about it recently. But yeah, now that I’ve got a sandwich shop, it’s pretty clear Geoff's Superlative Sandwiches]]]] left a lasting impression on me and Lottie & Zula’s.

Back to this sandwich which started it all. House roasted and 12 hour sous vide turkey, bacon and Swiss cheese get steamed, (melted cheese, warmed up meat, still crispy bacon). Thin sliced red onions, shredduce & celery salt in between two toasted slices of sour dough bread with Dijon mustard & cranberry sauce.

Big thanks to Geoff's Superlative Sandwiches]]]] for feeding me all those years and the inspiration to open Lottie & Zula’s and for this sandwich.

The John Cocktoeston is going to be back on the Special Board for a bit. Starting Sunday.

This is our roast beef sandwich on marble rye.

A couple things make this a pretty darn good sando, so here they are in bullet point.

•House roasted and 12 hour sous vide beef roast.
•Sliced thin, topped with sharp yellow cheddar and steamed until the cheese is melted.
•Crunchy fried onions & fresh red onions
•Extra fine shredduce
•Black garlic horseradish sauce & Dijon mustard
•Toasted marble rye
•Celery Salt

It’ll be back til it’s not.