Most of you who eat our food daily know Vincenzo.

Enzo was one of our first employees. He was a former student of Rolando’s working at the Four Seasons. He would help us with the truck here and there. I remember meeting him at Nuestra (now called Crop Circle Kitchen) at 4am, our regular routine at the time, showing him how to open the truck. The next day I had him open, and he had a list of improvements for me.

Enzo has always been conscientious, a hard worker, committed to what we’re trying to do with Clover, completely in love with food, and perhaps above all that a larger than life personality. You know when Enzo is coming. If you’ve met him you’ll never forget him. I know nobody who is anything like Enzo. I don’t expect I ever will. And we all love him to death.

Back in those early days Vincenzo brought me a salad he was really excited for me to try. Some of his family is from Calabria and this salad was based on a traditional salad their family enjoyed. The salad had potatoes, eggplant, and roasted peppers. It was familiar, but different from anything I’d had. The combination of textures and flavors was really vibrant but comforting at the same time. Like Enzo?

We’re going to get to have a lot of fun with wordplay because Enzo has translated his salad into a sandwich and we’re calling that sandwich the Enzo. It launched yesterday at CloverMIT. This Enzo has an Italian sweet pepper relish with a hint of spice, fried eggplant, provolone cheese, and fried potatoes. It’s totally different than anything we’ve done in the past.

If you try this at MIT let us know what you think. We’re in the development stage.

Whatever you do, don’t call this sandwich “The Vinny,” at least not to his face.