Evan Sung for The New York Times
Gargiulo's is one of several Coney Island restaurants that are more than mere dining establishments. "They're community centers," the chef Michael Lomonaco said.
GO ahead. Ask Antoinette Balzano. Ask her why Totonno's, the pizzeria in Coney Island, matters.
"Here's what we mean to the city," she said the other day, her voice rising with emotion. Ms. Balzano, one of the heirs to the pizzeria, pointed at a black-and-white photograph, leaning on a tabletop, showing a blunt-faced, apron-clad man who looked like a retired boxer. It was a portrait of her grandfather Anthony (Totonno) Pero, who hatched the Brooklyn landmark in 1924 after years making pies at the legendary Lombardi's on Spring Street.
"He left Naples," she said. "He came here on a boat, left everybody behind. This man. This man. He brought pizza to this country, my grandfather did."
Ms. Balzano was cold, angry and fed up. It was an overcast Monday in November, a full three weeks after Hurricane Sandy had blasted into Brooklyn, and she was waiting for an engineer to show up to survey the damage.
As she paced, swaddled in a puffy coat inside the pizzeria, where particles in the air made her cough and chairs were stacked up after having been tossed around like toys from a Barbie tea party, she got on the phone with an insurance company to express her displeasure.
"Is this a joke?" she said. "You guys run some operation, let me tell you."
No matter whom she spoke with, it seemed as if each person failed to comprehend what Totonno's signified. To Brooklyn. To New York. To America.
"Nobody knows that this is insane," she said.
Hurricane Sandy shredded the Atlantic Seaboard, flattening entire neighborhoods in New York and New Jersey, and it will take a long time to tally the full measure of that devastation. In a symbolic way, though, the storm's assault on restaurants like Totonno's tore at the very heart of the New York experience.
Totonno's is just one of scores of beloved haunts, old and new, that have been struggling in and around the city, in areas like Brighton Beach and Howard Beach, Red Hook and Hoboken. These are the restaurants where toasts are raised to newlyweds, where candles are blown out on birthday cakes, where locals unload their troubles at the bar, and where street food is occasionally elevated to art — or at least a rowdy, pugnacious history lesson.
For many New Yorkers, they are the places that left the first emotional imprint of what dining ought to feel like. Ask someone from Nebraska — or France, Brazil or Japan — to free-associate a bunch of dishes that come to mind when hearing the phrase "New York food," and there is a high probability that pizza and hot dogs will top that list. And when one longs for pizza and hot dogs, yearnings naturally turn to Coney Island, where two places that helped popularize them, Totonno's and Nathan's, were so ravaged by the storm that they have temporarily shut down.
If you're a Brooklynite, your mental list of food memories probably encompasses the marinara sauce at Randazzo's Clam Bar and the freshly made sandwiches at Jimmy's Famous Heros, both fixtures in Sheepshead Bay, or the lobster fra diavolo served in the buzzing banquet halls of Gargiulo's, which has been the special-occasion Windsor Castle of Coney Island since 1907.
Long before Brooklyn became an internationally recognized gastronomic brand, such places taught the borough how to eat. "These are the stalwarts of Brooklyn dining, as far as I'm concerned," said Michael Lomonaco, the Bensonhurst-bred executive chef at Porter House New York, who knows about loss, having headed the team at Windows on the World, atop the World Trade Center, on Sept. 11, 2001. "These restaurants are very close to me."
All were savaged by Sandy.
If you want to know why these establishments matter, ask Darren Aronofsky, the director behind movies like "Requiem for a Dream," "The Wrestler" and "Black Swan." Mr. Aronofsky grew up in Manhattan Beach. He remembers dropping into Jimmy's to get supplies before heading off to Mets games. He remembers watching the folks behind the counter squirting on the oil and vinegar, laying on the sliced onions, wrapping each sandwich in wax paper.
"That place is a classic," he said. "Whenever you went on a trip anywhere, you'd always get Jimmy's heroes."
Mr. Aronofsky can't help but rhapsodize about Totonno's, too — how, even when there is a long line of drooling customers, the conjuring of dough always comes to a halt when the fresh ingredients run out. The pies always had "that burnt taste, which was just so remarkable," he said. "It changed my perception of what pizza could be."
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
After Hurricane Sandy, Fighting to Save the Flavor of New York
Dengan url
https://dunialuasekali.blogspot.com/2012/11/after-hurricane-sandy-fighting-to-save.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
After Hurricane Sandy, Fighting to Save the Flavor of New York
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
After Hurricane Sandy, Fighting to Save the Flavor of New York
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar