Salumi

A Little More About Us

Located in the heart of Seattle's historic Pioneer Square district, Salumi Artisan Cured Meats brings to the Pacific Northwest a new concept based on some very old ideas. Drawing inspiration from the traditional Italian Salumeria, Salumi is an artisan's factory equipped to produce the highest quality gourmet cured meats and other traditional Italian foods. Our state-of-the-art curing facility has been custom-designed with space-age materials and processes to provide a level of artistic and process control unavailable to previous generations of Salumists. But Salumi is more than a place where wonderful foods are created and sold. It's also a place dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the handmade food traditions of Italy and the Mediterranean.

Salumi is the retirement dream for our co-founder and Principal Salumist, Armandino Batali. His maternal grandfather, Angelo Merlino, opened the first Italian food import store in Seattle in 1903. A century later and only a block from that original site, Armandino works with generations of family cooking traditions. Armandino's 31-year career as a Process-Control Engineer at Boeing plus a lifetime in the kitchen and two years in the formal study of meat-curing and cooking make Armandino uniquely qualified to produce artisan products that also exceed stringent modern-day food processing requirements. With Marilyn Batali, wife and co-founder, Salumi has grown from a small neighborhood deli to a well-known stop on the Seattle culinary scene.

In 2002, Armandino and Marilyn's daughter, Gina Batali, and son-in-law Brian D'Amato joined the business and together they decided to expand the cured meats product line, enabling Salumi to comply with governmental agencies while maintaining the artisan curing process from the past. Salumi now sells to both wholesale and retail customers and the focus is on the restaurant chefs, delis and the individual salumi lover. Salumi's meats are available to walk-in customers as well as through salumicuredmeats.com.

In 2005, Armandino and Marilyn sold the Deli to Brian and Gina who have been focused on continuing the quality of the menu and the warmth of the staff who work there. It truly has become a long-standing family with many of the original employees plus some newer faces too.

In 2014, the cured meats production facility was also sold to Gina and Brian who are now full owners and operators of the entire business. Marilyn continues to make gnocchi in the window on Tuesdays (except in the summer!) and Armandino pops in regularly to eat and make sure it's still good. And if it isn't, he lets us know