Eatin' wit' the Boys
PINE RESTAURANT TOO
JOHNNY LANZILLOTTO rented a car for our trip to the Bronx, because that's how he goes to the Bronx, especially when he's showing a hick like me around. He especially wanted to show me Zerega and Castle Hill Aves. He drove to the end of Zerega and pointed. "Here there were factories and the swamp, and they'd have gangs," he said. "There was never nothing here, and there's nothing here still. We used to meet for gangs; there was an abandoned lot for gang war."
We drove by a candy store he used to hang out at, and past the house of an old lady who loved him. "This is the texture of my neighborhood," he said.
Johnny has had the kind of life most New Yorkers don't have anymore: born, baptized, schooled in and out of class, all in about a three- block radius. He's written a screenplay called Bless Them All about growing up here in the 60s.
"When I was a kid I saw the GTOs, the hippies, the Four Seasons, the Temptations, and at the same time Jimi Hendrix-it all collided at once, on one street, and everybody's father was a WWII Vet."
Johnny had a period of working for the wise guys while heroin addiction took hold. He made it out alive, and several years later ended up driving a sweeper in the Bronx.
We had a couple of choices of where to eat. There's a famous Frankie & Johnny's, which is now called F&Js, on Bronxdale Ave., but we chose its much newer auxiliary restaurant, Point Too, which is much smaller and nestled near an auto body shop. I ordered croquettes ($4.50) and eggplant parmigiana ($9.95); with it came a side pasta with an oil and garlic sauce. Johnny got veal parm and the fried calamari with a marinara dipping sauce. "Tomato sauce is called 'gravy' in the Bronx," he explained.
The croquettes were huge: a large bowl of fried mashed-potato balls smothered in brown gravy and mozzarella. It blew my head off-this was the appetizer!? I wondered if Houston, the country's fattest city, had portions like this. Supposedly some of the larger citizens there just go to all-you-can-eat places, all day, because they can't stop themselves.
I had a couple of deep-fried mashed-potato balls, which were pretty good. Croquette is a typical Italian dish, but the gravy is an American touch: Starch on your starch? Yes, please! My eggplant parm was also enormous and filled with slabs of eggplant, and Johnny's veal was about an inch and a half thick.
"How much is a piece of veal?" Johnny pontificated. "They buy bulk and give you the extra dollars' worth! These people don't care; they just give it to you. The Bronx is a generous place, like the Bronx I grew up in. There was plenty of love, plenty of violence, but plenty of love. They'd give you a good meal, then they'd kick the shit out of you. They gave you plenty to eat!"
Then he added: "In the East Village, they don't give you anything, because they're afraid you'll split it with somebody!"
I asked the manager, Vince, if anybody ever finished an entire appetizer. "It's rare, but I've seen it. Most people take something home." He also told me that their food is more Southern Italian, with a touch of American. Vince's favorite is the penne alla vodka, which he gave me a small (for them) sample of. Bacon bits complemented the rich cream sauce, along with peas, prosciutto and sun-dried tomato.
I had never even heard of prosciutto until my father married an Italian woman, and one day she served it on top of a melon, which we ate sitting under a brand new chandelier, using the finest cutlery. I loved it-the meat/melon combo, the chandelier, the polished spoons-the Italians have got something on us.
Johnny performed the opening of his script. The quietly competent Vince and I enjoyed it quite a bit-he's got that actor's quality of seeming to talk directly to you, but somehow in a bigger better way than most of us can strive for. And readers, I ate that eggplant parm for the next three days, getting excited each time I remembered it was still in my refrigerator.