Move over, ham and cheese: Wollongong's Casa Lu is the sandwich sensation you didn't know you needed

The opening of Wollongong’s Casa Lu must have been a curious spectacle to onlookers.

A line of eager patrons spilled out of the tiny sandwich shop on Kembla Street, stretching to neighbouring businesses. Inside, the shelves were stacked high with schiacciata – a flatbread of Tuscan origins.

Within two hours on its first day of operation, the shop had sold out, and has continued to sell out every day since, often by 1 pm.

Why all the fuss over a sandwich shop, you might wonder?

For starters, owners Maria Luciani and Keana Lufe come with some culinary clout, having opened the successful K.malu Kitchen & Bar in 2020.

Though a more casual hole-in-the-wall operation, Casa Lu is a sort of offshoot from that venture. Keana makes the breads daily in the K.malu kitchen in a stone oven imported from Italy. The fillings are made on the restaurant’s stovetops.

But more importantly than this pedigree is the product; Casa Lu isn’t selling your run-of-the-mill ham and cheese toasties.

An Italian native, Maria’s vision is to bring authentic Roman-style sandwiches to the Gong. It all starts with the schiacciata.

“It’s round and quite thin and has this really crispy exterior but inside, it’s soft and pillowy and that makes for the ideal sandwich bread,” Maria says.

“The thinness offers a good bread-to-filling ratio, but it maintains its structural integrity, because that soft, pillowy inside absorbs the oils, pestos and sauces, while the crispy outer layer stays intact.

“It’s nice to hold and it’s delicious.”

Then, there are the fillings.

Casa Lu uses fine Italian ingredients, with meats and cheeses sourced from exclusive suppliers. Everything is cooked from scratch – like the porchetta – a savoury, fatty and moist boneless Italian pork roast, lovingly slow-cooked for three hours.

Layered with smoked cheese, apple sauce, roasted potato and pork crackling, it’s the heart of the number four or “Quattro” on the menu – a best seller.

Up there with it is the Sei (six) – a punchy sandwich of hot salami, Fiordilatte mozzarella, nduja, grilled peppers and baby gem lettuce.

For a newcomer, Maria suggests the Tre (three) – Mortadella, green olive, pistachio and Stracciatella cheese blow-torched to melty perfection.

“It’s a good entry-level sandwich if you want to see what we’re about,” she says.

Complementing the sandwich menu is a short but precise sweet offering from skilled Swedish pastry chef Diana Pupovac, headlined by the “Elizabeth Cake” – three layers of almond meringue, each coated with rich dark chocolate and layered with a secret sauce that takes three hours to craft.

Made using a recipe passed down through generations, Maria hopes the gluten-free masterpiece will become something Wollongong is known for.

Only a month since opening, Maria and Keana are already on the lookout for bigger premises, having topped out on its current operation at about 250 sandwiches a day,

“We’re technically open 10 am to 3 pm, but often selling out well before that. We would love to ramp up production to keep up with the demand,” Maria says.

“Perhaps it’s a good problem to have, but ideally we wouldn’t have to turn a single patron away.”

Casa Lu is open at 84C Kembla Street, Wollongong from Monday to Saturday, 10 am to 3 pm or until sold out.