On the Trail of Carlo Bacigalupo

It's adventures like the following that make running this blog occasionally rewarding. I was wandering aimlessly around the border of Chinatown and Little Italy when I decided to give a good look-see at the Most Precious Blood Church on Baxter near Canal, a gaudy Roman Catholic edifice I'd never given much thought. It's official address is 109 Mulberry (and most people enter that way, too), but the church faces onto Baxter. Inside, a half dozen ancient Italian woman were saying Mass. The place was renovated in the mid-90s is a particularly garish, vulgar manner, so the architecture and interior design isn't much to look at.

Outside, on either side of the entrance, I noticed two sculpted depictions of events from the life of Christ. Under each were the words "Charles Bacigalupo. Sexton Undertaker. 26 1/2 Mulberry St.—208-210 Spring St."

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Duane Reade Is the Subway Entrance King of the Drug Store Chains

A couple months ago I wrote about the novelty of a Duane Reade pharmacy in Times Square having it's own subway entrance—a luxury usually reserved for fancy hotels, office buildings and department stores.

I thought this was a kind of accident of architecture. But maybe Duane Reade knows exactly what its doing. Here's another branch at 60 Spring Street, and it has its own subway entrance! Granted, this is a different affair. The Times Square building is new. This is an old bank building that the DR chain took over. (We all know that the ever-invention Duane Reade will put a pharmacy in any existing structure, from a movie palace to a dog house.) So the bank had it's own subway entrance. But now Duane Reade does. Still, it lends a coolness to the damn drug store.

The bank, by the way, was the East River Savings Bank. It must have served the old Italian community in this area. One is used to see old lettering and inscriptions scraped of the sides of old stone banks. And you have that here too. But the words are in Italian. Cassette di Sicurezza means Safety Deposit Boxes.

A Cheese Bell at Alleva Dairy

Caffe Roma

Grand Street Mozzarella Taste Test

I love walking down the north side of Grand Street between Mulberry and Mott, the only block of Manhattan's Little Italy that seems to retain some authenticity and practical application, vis a vis good food. Alleva Dairy, Piemonte's Ravioli, Di Palo Fine Foods—I love these old shops.

Alleva and Di Palo's (below) are both touted for their mozzarella. I've bought cheese from both places on occasion, but never at the same time, and never really sat down and chose a favorite.

So, last Saturday I stopped by both Alleva and Di Palo's and bought a lump of fresh house-made mozzarella from both stores. (With a side trip to purchase some broccoli rabe ravioli from Piemonte.) It took a minute at tiny Alleva. It took about a half hour at large, crowded, take-a-ticket Di Palo's. Both cheeses were made fresh that day; I asked.

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Lost City Asks "Who Goes to Puglia Ristorante?"

It's a case of strange fate that Puglia Ristorante, on Hester Street, just off Mulberry, should be the oldest restaurant in what's left of Manhattan's Little Italy. It doesn't serve the best food in the area, is far from being the most famous of Little Italy's restaurants and never, ever gets written up by the food press. But some time ago, it hit upon a tourist-trap formula that shows no sign of losing steam. Big parties in, big parties out. Also strange is that there is nothing of Puglian cuisine in the menu. Just your standard red-sauce choices and a lot of mediocre pizza. It would be nice if the owning family decided to aspire to something more, and make the more of the restaurant's 91-year-old legacy. But, for now, they're not exactly committing any crimes.

Who Goes There? Puglia Ristorante

Puglia Ristorante is the Little Italy version of Sammy's Roumanian Steak House—a place people go not for the food or the ambiance, but for the implicit promise of an unbridled, wholesome good time. As at Sammy's, many a birthday is celebrated at Puglia. And just as many large tables of besotted diners clap with simple-minded joy to the corny song stylings of a single man at an electric keyboard over Puglia's brick-oven pizza as they do over Sammy's chopped liver.

In the case of Puglia, that piano man is Jorge Boccio, who has been pumping the organ and encouraging people to "put your hands together—this is Puglia Restaurant!" for 26 of the Hester Street restaurant's 91 years. There are several photo collages of Boccio on the wall, showing him sporting Elvis-like hair and sideburns, and posing with celebrities. (How did Leonardo DiCaprio ever end up at Puglia?) These photos bore little resemblance to the stooped man in the keyboard necktie who pulled the Casio out from against the wall on a recent night, and quietly stepped behind the instrument. But, as he broke into "That's Amore" to the utter delight of the crowd, the years peeled away some. "Volare" and "Sway" followed. By the time I had finished my shrimp scampi (six tough shrimp, one hundred shavings of garlic), I had heard nearly every song made famous by Dean Martin.

The long tables of carousing clappers consumed many pitchers of beer and unlabeled bottles of red wine (could this be "Puglia's famous house wine," which goes for $19 a bottle?). They were mainly tourists, I was told. Groups book space in the huge restaurant weeks in advance. They come every eve and revel in the faux Little Italy experience manufactured by Puglia. (Four different "party packages" are advertised on the website.) Jorge performs seven nights a week. How many sets he plays, a busboy told me, depends on how big the crowd is, and how generous. Judging by the number of smaller family parties that wandered in, however, it seems that Puglia also attracts its share of random tourists, as well as some local loyalists who know that a meal here is stress- and decorum-free.

One wonders what founder Gregorio Garofolo would think of all this raucous kitsch. He stares down skeptically, looking like an Italian Winston Churchill, chin in hand, from a framed photo at the back. The joint is still in the same family, my thickly toupeed waiter said. Surely, though, Puglia didn't begin like this back in 1919. But that's the kind of thing that only bothers history nerds like me. The folks who eat here aren't thinking about 1919. They're thinking about here and now, and the good time they're having, and whether their camera or camcorder has enough juice left to record all the merriment. Meanwhile, Jorge counts out the tips in his silver basket, carefully separating the fives from the ones, grimaces a little, neatly places the bills in his pocket and disappears into the next room.

—Brooks of Sheffield

New Restaurant Kenmare Furthering Name of Big Tim Sullivan

The food blogs are all lately abuzz about Kenmare, the latest project from restaurateur Joey Campanaro. I wonder if Joey realizes what a piece of ignoble, if rather funny, 19th-century political chicanery he is furthering by naming his eatery after Kenmare Street.

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Some Stuff That's Interesting

[Picture courtesy of Best View in Brooklyn]

Wrap-up of the various ways the City lied to the Gowanus community at the Jan. 23 public meeting about the Superfund Scandal. [Found in Brooklyn]

The City then returned on Jan. 24 to lie some more. [Pardon Me for Asking]

The owner of an eminently landmarkable 1870 house in Bayside doesn't think the place is "elegant" enough for landmark status. Gosh, think he might have selfish personal reasons for that stance? [Daily News via Gothamist]

The inside of Circus legend James Bailey's unwanted Harlem mansion is crazy beautiful. [New York Mag]

Big crack in building: no good. [EV Grieve]

That was Beauty Bar, and don't it look grand. [JVNY]

Cuckoo control freak Bloomberg said on WNYC, regarding school control bill: "If the Senate passes something that differs by one word or more, it is saying to the city ‘We want to resurrect the Soviet Union. We want to bring back chaos.’” [Queens Crap]

Look Down

Want to know what business you're dealing with in Little Italy? Look down.

Perhaps nowhere else in the City is there a greater concentration of tiled doorsteps, spelling out the names of the stores you're about to enter, than the block of Grand Street between Mulberry and Mott. It's a nice tradition, one in which the merchant illustrates their pride in their trade, while simultaneously beautifying the space outside his shop. Too bad it's passed out of use.

Provolone Bread in the Morning

Many years ago, I worked at Spring Street Books, an independent book store in Soho that was run by misanthropic, mumbling troll named Izzy whose paranoid, irrational edicts were enforced by a shifty toady manager named Jim. The shop was beloved by locals, but to the staff it was a den of misery.

I often worked morning shifts and one of the only consolations of my working there was that, in order to get to work in the early morning hours, I had to walk down the often fog-bound eastern stretch of Spring Street, right past a narrow Italian bakery called D&G Bakery. D&G had the best Provolone bread I have every tasted. It came in rings and I would buy one and munch on it as I walked the rest of the way to work. It was the perfect portable breakfast. Strolling those deserted, cobble-stone streets, the morning light just creeping in, that delicious, savory bread in my mouth, New York seemed wonderful.

I was only able to buy the bread because I patronized the shop at so early an hour. D&G opened early and would routinely sell out its stock in a few hours. It was rare to ever see the store open past noon. The bread was actually cook in ancient ovens in a basement around the corner on Mulberry Steet; the Spring Street shop was used only for sales. All the bread was made by hand; no machines. D&G closed in 1997 and, to me, no other bakery has quite captured my affections the same way since. A bag store called Crumpler occupies the space now. A clerk there told me people poke their heads in regularly asking about the bakery.

Good Sign City: Grand Street

Hoo-doggy! A motherload of good signs can be found within a couple blocks on Grand Street, a street that heartily insists that there still is a Little Italy in Manhattan.

Need ravioli? They've got it, and you can choose your favorite purveyor. I just want to swoon when I walk down this street. Every storefront is an aesthetic dream, every sign boasting a birth year of 1901 or 1920 or somesuch.

For extra ecstasy, check out the inside tile job in Alleva. That thing should be in the Met!