Besides New York, my home state of New Jersey has the most Italians per capita in the entire United States. The town I grew up in, Palisades Park, was once 70% Italian with the remaining percentage being of other European ethnicities (mostly Greek, Yugoslavian, Irish, German). Over the past fifteen years, that town has become 80% Asian and only a few of the old stores and residents remain.

Mulberry Street’s Little Italy (in lower Manhattan) is now getting smaller and smaller as Chinatown grows. I’ve been told that even in Italy, a large Asian population is moving in to the country. I am not writing this to spark a political, social or racial debate, and I feel that every nationality should have a chance to prosper.

But it’s sad to me that so many Italian and Italian-American communities are dwindling.

As I’ve stated before, I love the Garden State, but there really aren’t many “Little Italy” neighborhoods anymore. There are definitely still Italian and Italian-American places where we congregate to eat, drink, socialize and watch sports. At World Cup time, towns like Nutley, Lyndhurst, Lodi and Garfield are filled with more flags of green, white and red than anywhere else. But there isn’t really a centralized strip of stores and eateries lined up like there are in New York—our hot spots are scattered around and you have to really know where to look to find them.

Little Italy in the Bronx is called “The Real Little Italy.” Trying to constitute what’s considered “real” or not is something that I am not going to do here. Everyone has their favorite Little Italy neighborhoods.

Having always went to Mulberry Street as a kid, that’s all I knew. Enjoying Vincent’s fried calamari with their thick spicy red sauce late at night and fresh cannolis from Ferrara’s are nice memories for me. I must admit, I really do love visiting the Belmont Section of the Bronx—187th Street and Arthur Avenue. There’s less tourists and commercialism there and more authenticity. If that’s what they mean by “real,” then I would definitely say it is the real deal.

As an adult, I’ve been to a handful of Little Italies in my life. Besides Manhattan and the Bronx, I’ve visited the ones in Staten Island, Connecticut, Philly, Baltimore, Boston and Canada. All are different in their own ways and each have provided me with memories and reasons for going back. There are many more I’d like to explore—not just locally like Brooklyn and Providence—but also in Ohio, St. Louis, Chicago and San Fran (to name a few). There’s actually a book called “Americas Little Italys: Recipes & Traditions from Coast to Coast,” which I ironically found at Eataly in NYC. It documents all the various Little Italy neighborhoods in North America. The Bronx I know like the back of my hand, and me and Tony Mangia made the trip there last month for some walking, eating, shopping and picture-taking…

We went to mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel (a beautiful Church), and then enjoyed fantastic espresso made by my pal Johnny at his Cerini Coffee store, which was followed up with delicious brick oven pizzas from Zero Otto Nove. I had to then grab a loaf of the best bread in the neighborhood from Madonia Bros. to take home. Tony got a box of Sicilian candy (Fiasconaro Torroncini) from the Arthur Ave. Market, a tub of sanguinaccio (pig’s blood pudding) and cartocci from Egidio Pastry as well as a beautiful Napoli jacket from DeCicco Bros. clothing shop.

We stocked up on soaps; some bottles of Felce Azzurra and bars of Fissi Buon Bucato and I also got a jar of imported baby food, Mellin Pesca (Alimento per l’infanzia vitaminizzato). I would like to note that my son spits out Gerber and any other baby foods but he LOVED this one. Everything from Italy is the best and it’s all here!

Spring is a great time to walk around Belmont. The clam bar at Cosenza’s opens up where they’ll shuck icy cold ones right on the spot for you to slurp down…you can see baby rabbits and lambs hanging in the windows of Vincent’s Meat Market in preparation for Pasqua and stroll down to Ciccarone Park for some bocce at the newly redesigned courts. The aromas of the cheese shops, bakeries, pizzerias and ristorantes are intoxicating. Come here whether you need (or just want) tins of olive oil, canned tomatoes, religious goods, cigars, a pizzelle maker, music tapes or cds, books, a deck of Scopa cards, or really anything Italian that you’ll never find in a big supermarket (except for Corrado’s, that is).


See, these generation-to-generation institutions are the fabric of this country and when they are gone they are gone. There will not be a rebuilding of these areas by a new group of Italian immigrants so we need to cherish and save what we have. Sure there may be “Italian redevelopment,” but it will not be in the way that our original ancestors did it. In most of these communities, the little stores usually just get replaced with massive, trendy “Eataly” type establishments—constructed by celebrity chefs to appeal to the masses.

But not in the Bronx. A new coat of paint and new signs on Artuso Pastries and Full Moon Pizza are as far as the expansion goes. New windows and entrances are also planned at the Arthur Avenue Market. These are the only changes I noticed—all which kept the integrity of the original structures and make them ready for another fifty or hundred years of success.

Don’t get me wrong, Eataly is very nice and it actually is authentic right now, but its corporate structure brings restrictions such as a possible future compromise on the authenticity factor—both with the products sold and staff hired. The Arthur Avenue Market never did (and hopefully never will) carry anything less than 100% authentic imports or have a non-Italian serving you. Why? Because a place like that wasn’t built for the masses, it was built for the Italian families, this is where this whole sense of community was born.


A perfect example—take the Bronx tale of last month—the attempted jewelry store robbery at Arthur Avenue’s Spinelli & Sons. It truly showed that sense of community. In case you didn’t hear the story, two of Spinelli’s neighbors assisted him in chasing down the suspects who attempted to rob his store. A direct quote from one of the merchants who stepped in to help: “This is our neighborhood and we protect our neighborhood.” You will never see a story like that in corporate America. Protecting the neighborhood is protecting the heritage.

The Italian feasts are big in all Little Italies and reunite a lot of the old-timers to the streets and introduce new people to them. Belmont has three of them. Speaking of these feasts, we all know that recently there has been a lot of talk about downsizing the city’s oldest—San Gennaro—in Manhattan’s Little Italy. Look, this is the melting pot and places do diversify over time, but the comment I read in one article about this San Gennaro situation where a youngster walked into a centuries-old Italian store and asked the owner why he would open up an Italian store in a “Chinese neighborhood” shows several things.

First, it shows that Chinatown is expanding, but more importantly it shows that the old-school paisans aren’t taking the next generation to Little Italy to educate them and perpetuate these mom and pop shops. With less visiting, more Italians exiting and new influxes by other ethnicities, the whole area could become extinct.


My point in all this is that even though Arthur Ave. is where I visited recently, that doesn’t mean I won’t be back to Mulberry Street. The reason is because those memories of the aforementioned calamari are important to me and even though things change, the only way to at least keep a semblance of what once was is to not just remember, but talk, visit, eat, and breathe the air on these old blocks—before they are totally gone.

People seem to do that in Belmont and you can feel the vibe when you actually hear old ladies speaking Italian to one another as they walk and the mass being said half in English and half in Italian. We need to keep up such things in all Little Italies!


JM’s Bronx-Inspired Eggplant Parm

I recently made eggplant parmigiano inspired by my visit to the Arthur Ave. Market where David Greco of Mike’s Deli makes some of the best in the world. His recipe even defeated Bobby Flay in a famous throwdown. Now here’s my take, which is very, very simple. I do not “layer” my eggplant parm or use mozzarella, I actually like to use extra sharp imported provolone cheese sprinkled on top and just lightly melted. Adds a real nice bite…

Remove skin from eggplants, slice into 1 ½ inch thick rounds and dredge in flour / egg / breadcrumbs. Fry the eggplant rounds in a deep fryer until they become nice and crisp. Dry them on paper bags to remove excess oil. In a casserole pan, spread a layer of a quick tomato sauce made with crushed San Marzano tomatoes, chopped garlic, olive oil and fresh basil (you can make this sauce in twenty minutes), and then place the eggplant on top of the sauce. Sprinkle a layer of provolone on top and warm in the oven for five minutes at 300. Serve each portion with a small ladle of sauce of top and a shake of Pecorino Romano.