Le Grand Bouquet and Take Flight installations at the 2025 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at Empire Polo Club on April 11, 2025, in Indio, Calif.
Kevin Mazur/Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for Coa
It’s hard to find water in a desert, but it might be harder to find a reasonably priced meal at Coachella. The desert music festival exists in a self-contained universe, one where a couple of chicken tenders and fries can cost north of $20, and you’re out of touch for thinking that a corn dog shouldn’t cost $17.
As with most festivals, attendees begrudgingly accept that unless they plan to subsist on PB&Js and trail mix, these little financial indignities are part of the cost, in addition to the hundreds of dollars spent on passes, travel and hotels or car camping. So when this SFGATE reporter encountered a vendor that sold classic Italian sandwiches at real-world prices — and then, crucially, discovered that the sandwiches were not just good, but excellent — he bought three.
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All’Antico Vinaio is a famous Italian sandwich chain. By Italian sandwich, I don’t mean the cold cuts that you find in most American delis. I mean old-country Italian — Tuscan bread, prosciutto, etc. The shop began in Florence, Italy; expanded to New York; then landed in Southern California, which is probably why All’Antico Vinaio has a stall at Coachella. You can find it in a dining area called Indio Central Market on festival grounds, near the Outdoor Theatre stage.
Two sandwiches from All’Antico Vinaio at Coachella 2025, in Indio, Calif.
Timothy Karoff / SFGATE
The two types of sandwiches I purchased were not enormous (slightly shorter than my Nalgene, and about as wide), but at $12 and $14, they were the best deals of any of the food items I surveyed in my passes through the festival grounds. The only cheaper meal-sized item I saw was a $10 slice of pizza. All’Antico Vinaio’s vegetarian option, La Broadway, costs $10, with pistachio cream and sun-dried tomatoes.
La Coachella ($14), a sandwich made especially for the festival, was a standout. The sliced Tuscan bread was crunchy on the outside, fluffy on the inside and lined with stracciatella cheese, a mozzarella spread that’s almost cloudlike in texture. In between the halves of bread were basil leaves coated in olive oil and sun-dried tomatoes, lending the whole sandwich a fruity brightness that was welcome in the blistering heat. The layers of fatty prosciutto, just salty enough to not overpower the other flavors, tied the whole package together.
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La Paradiso ($12) was the real treat, though. Take out the sun-dried tomatoes and basil, and swap the prosciutto for layers of paper-thin mortadella. In this sandwich, the stracciatella was bolstered by a generous smear of pistachio cream, which was almost — key word, almost — overwhelmingly rich, and subtly sweet. Crushed pistachios punctuated the soft spreads with a light crunch.
Most importantly, I finished my meal and felt, well, good. Most festival meals are so oily that by the time I finish eating, I feel like George Bush could declare war on my pores. These sandwiches are my solace. I’ll order three more tomorrow.
