May all your Christmases be Italian

If the 1990s had an ethnicity, for me it was Italian-American.

“Italians and Jews, very similar. Same corporation, different divisions,” Italian-American comedian Sebastian Maniscalco once joked. I agreed. Italian-American culture always felt so familiar to me. My own joke was I love being Jewish but would consider converting to Italian. Their ways are very understandable.

Our family moved to Bensonhurst, then an Italian-American enclave, when I was a teenager. Every pizza place was owned by a guy named Tony or Frankie. I can still picture their perfect baked ziti with gooey, never gritty, ricotta and mozzarella cheese. To this day I continue to seek out that dish as I remember it but never quite find it.

On Sundays, the whole neighborhood smelled of food. Extended family would pull up in very clean cars, dressed up for dinner. Kids piled out, girls in shiny shoes, the little boys with their hair gelled perfectly into place. Some people carried aluminum trays of food. Others had cellophane wrapped plates of cookies. It seemed like dozens of people would pack into modest, red brick homes. I didn’t know what went on inside but it seemed like the best of times.

The 90s were a peak time to be Italian-American in Brooklyn- or to be around them. The 18th Avenue Feast was where you found out who was going with who when they’d show up holding hands by the zeppole stand. IROC-Z cars would cruise down 86th street blasting Stevie B. The Christmas lights in Dyker Heights hadn’t become a national phenomenon yet with tour busses pulling through. At the movies, the best films were about Italian-Americans. Goodfellas, 1990. My Cousin Vinny, 1992. A Bronx Tale, 1993. Carlito’s Way, 1993. Casino, 1995. Donnie Brasco, 1997. We don’t talk about Godfather III, 1990. And, of course, on TV, The Sopranos debuted in 1999.

Sure, many of these played on stereotypes of Italians as mobsters. But most also showcased the glorious food, the outfits and, most of all, the idea that family was everything. The on-screen dramatizations might have been unfair but they certainly added to the mystique of this culture.

Was there a, how shall we put it, questionable element, in real life too? Now who’s doing the stereotyping. One time, during the pandemic years when antisocial behavior became the acceptable norm in so many parts of New York, a drunk man was being belligerent outside of the iconic L&B Spumoni Gardens (founded 1939) pizza place in Brooklyn. A group of men in velour track suits stepped out of their cars to get some spumoni and everyone around could be confident there wouldn’t be any trouble. Were they mob? Who knew. The old men who still sit on Luquer Street in Carroll Gardens, in fold-out lawn chairs on the concrete, keeping an eye on the neighborhood, are they? Or are they just men who don’t let dysfunction happen on their watch. As we said with a wink in Bensonhurst: Everyone knows there’s no such thing as the mafia, you watch too many movies.

Then there’s the food, my goodness, the food. The pizza, done for decades the same way at DiFara’s, founded 1965 or Totonno’s, 1924. Mozzarella from Pisa Pork Store, 1967. Linguini white clam sauce at Gargiulo’s, 1907. Stuffed artichoke at Ortobello, 1974. Italian combo at Defonte, 1922. Rainbow cookies from Rimini Bakery, 1973 or Mazzola, 1928. Blush sauce pasta at Chef Vola, 1921, on Atlantic City trips. Of all these, only Pisa is gone, having closed following the death of owner Joseph "Joe Pisa" Sanfratello in March 2020.

Dom DeMarco, who died in March 2022, making pizza at DiFara’s:

I love how Italian-Americans pass on their ways from generation to generation. Tradition! But I also value how they created their own thing in America. The Italian-American food is different than dining in Italy. On Christmas Eve in the US, Italians famously do a Feast of the Seven Fishes. Few in Italy have ever heard of such a thing. When people dismiss some restaurants as “red sauce joints,” I bristle. Red sauce is easy to make passable but hard to do well. “No bad pizza” and all that. Great red sauce restaurants are vulnerable to criticism because the cuisine has spread so far and wide across America that towns where a Vinny or Sal have never set foot somehow still have their food available to the masses.

I always felt it was unfair that Italian-Americans were reduced to celebrating their heritage once a year in tandem with Christopher Columbus. He was Italian, ok, but doing the bidding of Spanish royalty a long time ago. Let’s celebrate his discoveries, sure, but Italian-Americans deserve something more specific to them too.

The numbers vary but somewhere around 4 million Italians moved to America between 1880 and 1920. According to the Library of Congress, “Many Italians went to work on the growing city's municipal works projects, digging canals, laying paving and gas lines, building bridges, and tunneling out the New York subway system. In 1890, nearly 90 percent of the laborers in New York's Department of Public Works were Italian immigrants.” In so many ways, this demographic built New York and kept it humming.

Italians don’t get the praise for what they did and they don’t get the glory. They don’t get appreciation for how they’ve adapted completely to being Americans but somehow maintained their Italian-ness too.

In my Bensonhurst, the neighborhood changed, the people stopped visiting on Sundays. Another Jew who seems like he’s converted to Italian, Billy Joel, sang about Anthony moving out and that’s exactly what happened. I’d catch glimpses of them carrying platters of cookies into homes in Staten Island, in New Jersey. The pizza got better on Long Island…and in Florida. I missed them and started organizing my group of friends, largely ex-Soviet Jews like myself but with one honest-to-goodness Italian-American who actually speaks Italian, to go to old-school Italian restaurants around New York. We’ve been to Bamonte, founded in 1900, Michael’s of Brooklyn, 1964, and slid into Forlini’s pink booths shortly before they ended their 66 year run in 2022:

The restaurants are a step back in time and they shine brightest during the Christmas season. White table cloths, of course. The Frank Sinatra Christmas album is only shuffled with the Dean Martin Christmas album. The waiters are professionals. Even on non-weekend nights, everyone is made up. Men in button-down shirts and slacks, women in tight sweaters with perfect long nails. Sparkly pants and sprayed in place hair. Heels, always. It’s the effort. Everyone spent time getting their look together and it shows. No one rolled out of bed to eat veal cutlet. Everyone brings it. It’s dazzling.

At the end of the meal, the restaurant buys a round of Grappa or Limoncello. People argue over who gets to pay the check.

For all of our conversations about what American culture means, Italians managed to blaze a path, be all the way American, make it easier for those who came up the road after them, while modeling manners, friendship and family, and making the best food of all. They’ve set a standard and I want to let them know it hasn’t gone unnoticed. Buon Natale, friends!