Focaccia Is Everywhere Right Now—Here Are 6 Sandwiches to Try

Focaccia–daintily dimpled and gleaming with olive oil—is seemingly everywhere these days. As these chefs prove, the Italian flatbread makes for a stellar sandwich. Here’s where to get your fix.

Ama

Chef Johanna Hellrigl deep-dives on focaccia at her neighborhoody Italian restaurant in Navy Yard, offering two renditions favored by her Ligurian mother: focaccia di formaggio­—supple sheets of thin dough sandwiching melty crescenza cheese—and prettily pitted, inch-thick focaccia Genovese, which can come topped with tangles of onions or San Marzano tomatoes and cheese.

Fossette Focacceria

Tucked next door to his All-Purpose pizzeria in Shaw, chef Mike Friedman’s molto bello Italian sandwich shop serves its breakfast and lunch options on focaccia. Try the Bottega, with scrambled eggs, bacon, and melted fontina cheese, or the Testaccio, which features creamy horseradish sauce ladled over braised short rib.

Boogy & Peel

In keeping with the quirky maximalist vibes of the pies at this Dupont pizzeria, chef Rachael Jennings offers a couple of over-the-top sandos. For the @kschifanorealtor (a riff on her pizza of the same name), she toasts Duke’s mayo–slathered rectangles of focaccia to bookend deli meats like prosciutto, calabrese salami, and mortadella.

Red Hound Pizza

Using flours crafted with locally grown and milled wheats, chef Charbel Abrache creates flavorful focaccia for his seasonal sandwiches. Fillings rotate but have included salami-seasoned celeriac with black-olive gremolata; mortadella slathered in salsa verde; and roasted shiitakes with chèvre.

Nido

This artfully curated Mount Pleasant wine and gourmet shop offers a thoughtful selection of sandwiches. Springy, well-oiled focaccia serves as the base for an Italian sandwich—packed with folds of mortadella, spiced salami, and shaved pecorino—and a Spanish BLT, which features crispy Serrano ham and a giant cross-section of tomato.

Sonny’s Pizza

Gleaming golden squares of focaccia freckled with sesame seeds are the foundation for hefty, satisfying sandwiches at this Park View pizza shop. The Long Shot is laden with ham, soppressata, provolone, and Calabrian chili butter, while the Deuce Court holds roasted red peppers, mozzarella, and arugula.

This article appears in the January 2025 issue of Washingtonian.

Nevin Martell

Contributing Writer

Nevin Martell is a food, travel, and foraging writer whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, USA Today, Men’s Journal, Fortune, Travel + Leisure, The Daily Beast, BBC, and many other publications. He is author of eight books, including Red Truck Bakery Cookbook: Gold-Standard Recipes from America’s Favorite Rural Bakery, Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and His Revolutionary Comic Strip, and The Founding Farmers Cookbook: 100 Recipes From the Restaurant Owned by American Family Farmers. When he isn’t working, he loves spending time with his son, foraging for wild foods, and traveling.