A Good Sign: York Deli


Just the Pepsi sign, I mean, not the awning. Bold. Simple. In Yorkville.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Racine Landmark Totero's to Close After 75 Years

Image
Totero's, a priceless, one-of-a-kind Italian restaurant in Racine, Wisconsin, that I just discovered a couple years ago, is going to shutter on June 26 after 75 years in business. Totero's was founded by Calabrian immigrants Achille and Mary Totero as a tavern in 1939. It was subsequently run by their son Santo "Sam" Totero and his wife Virginia, and is still run by Sam's children Al and Angela. Al runs the bar, Angela the kitchen. Sam died in February 2011 at the age of 89. The building is a converted schoolhouse. The 36-foot bar was contributed by the Pabst brewery back during The Great Depression. Albert and Angela Totero have decided to retire. "It’s just been a long, hard road," they told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal , "and it’s just time. The place is old, and it needs some work." Their children have their own professions and don't want to take over. Totero's is one of the most unique places I've ever had the pleasure to vis...
Read more

A Perfect Storefront: Golden Pizza

Image
Haven't done one of these in a while. But this pizzeria, encountered by accident during a trip to The Bronx, seemed to fit the bill, what with the corner space, the hand-painted signage on both sides of the storefront, and the upper signs with the illustration of the pizza man flipping dough. Golden Pizza is in Mott Haven. It's at the corner of Brook Avenue and 138th Street. From the looks of the place, it was founded in the early 1970s, and no later. But who can tell? Places like this, there's very little recorded history about. But it has the feel of that kind of local pizzeria that neighborhood people have been depending on for decades. For the record, it's owned by two folks named Harjinger and Manginda Singh.
Read more

A Memory of Levy's Pizza

Image
Levy's stood at the northeast corner of Delancey and Essex in Manhattan, where Roma Pizza now is, and sold frankfurters, hamburgers, custard and pizza. You could buy a (non-kosher) hot dog and a glass mug of root beer for ten cents. Though the pizza doesn't get the biggest play on the sign, apparently it was something else. A reader recently wrote in: Levy's pizza was something special, ironic in that a purveyor of a very ordinary pie (Roma) now occupies that location. The Levy pizza was unique in its composition of very thin crust, slightly tangy sauce and relatively light quantity of mozarella. I'd classify it as highly addictive. I lived in the neighborhood but had a friend "hooked on the pizza" who would often travel from midtown to partake of several slices. From my recollection, they served that same recipe from as far back as the '60s into the early '80s at which point they switched over to a more conventional product. Apparently, the Le...
Read more