Where to find the real deal, classic Italian food in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn

Farideh Sadeghin is a Brooklyn-based writer and recipe developer. In this series , she explores New York City neighborhoods through their food and histories.

There is no shortage of old school and new Italian restaurants throughout New York City, from Manhattan’s Little Italy to Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn. But an often overlooked neighborhood with a rich Italian history is Bensonhurst in southern Brooklyn.

My friend Frank Pinello, chef and owner of Best Pizza , grew up in Bensonhurst. His grandparents and family moved to the neighborhood from Sicily looking for opportunity and work in 1959, when his father was 5 years old. Pinello’s family was among an influx of Italians moving to Brooklyn around that time.

Today, the neighborhood is now widely considered Brooklyn’s second Chinatown, after Sunset Park, reflecting its growing Asian population .

But if you walk along 18th Avenue, known as “Cristoforo Colombo Boulevard” from 65th Street to 86th Street, you’ll see Italian restaurants and shops next to Chinese restaurants and even Italian restaurants with Mandarin characters on the signs.

Pinello took me on a tour of Italian restaurants and grocery stores that have been neighborhood staples for decades. Here are the highlights.

A taste of home

We began our day at D. Coluccio & Sons on 60th Street, which is technically in the neighborhood considered Borough Park. It's a spot Pinello and his family have visited for years for pasta, anchovies, and cheeses. Pinello recalls seeing baccala, or salted cod, hanging from the ceiling when he'd visit during the holidays as a child.

The grocer first began as a deli when Domenico Coluccio moved to the United States from Calabria in southern Italy in 1958. He and his two sons, Luigi and Rocco, opened D. Coluccio & Sons in 1964, focusing on importing products from Italy to feed other Italians in the neighborhood who needed a taste of home.

We were immediately hit with the aroma of fresh cheese as we entered. Luigi Coluccio was there when we arrived and showed us his favorite cheese, Crotonese, a sweet, salty Calabrian cheese (which I later purchased). He sliced us some of their ricotta salata, which is the creamiest cheese I’ve ever tried. I regretted not also buying some to take home.

A lemon ice palate cleanser

From D. Coluccio & Sons, we headed to the nearby Savarese Italian Pastry Shoppe on the corner of 60th Street and New Utrecht Avenue. Owner Mario Giurra, who had just been pulling trays of biscotti out of the oven, ran from the back to greet us. His tanned skin glowed as he smiled and talked quickly and excitedly while showing off the bakery's 100-year-old oven. Savarese has been open since 1918, but Giurra and his brother bought the shop from the second owner in 1962.

Pinello ordered a lemon ice with bits of lemon peel in it and told me he used to ride his bike to the shop as a kid. I ordered the cremolata, a vanilla ice cream base with toasted hazelnuts throughout.

Heroes

While I’m always happy to have Italian ice and gelato as my first meal of the day, we were both hungry for something a little more substantial, so we headed to Lioni Italian Heroes on 15th Avenue between 78th Street and 79th Street. The entire block is lined with Italian shops with Romeo Meats (a butcher) on the corner, Lioni Italian Heroes, Papa Pasquale (another sandwich shop and grocer), and Lioni Latticini Mozzarella Company, but we picked Lioni because it’s a spot that Pinello has been coming to for years.

I flipped through the menu and my brain immediately started to melt. There are over 100 different sandwich varieties, each named after different Italian Americans, including Dom Deluise, Joe Pesci and Yogi Berra. All of the sandwiches also include a catchphrase with a list of their ingredients and prices.

We ordered the Alfonso Supremo. It includes fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, fresh basil, oregano and capicola — which we make a show of pronouncing as "gabagool," like Tony Soprano, and which is how Pinello grew up saying it. We also ordered the Alyssa Milano (a chicken cutlet, prosciutto di parma, fresh mozzarella and basil mix) and the Joe Pepitone (thinly sliced eggplant, smoked mozzarella, roasted red peppers, balsamic and oregano).

I grabbed a loaf of prosciutto bread (aka lard bread), which is studded with cubes of prosciutto and it’s one of my favorite things. Whenever I see it, I have to buy it.

We sat outside at a table on the sidewalk to eat. The bread was soft, perfect for this kind of sandwich – the kind so large, you have a hard time opening your mouth wide enough to take a bite. The prosciutto on the Alyssa Milano was salty (in the best way possible) and the eggplant on the Joe Pepitone was so thin that we assumed it was cut with a meat slicer. We wrapped up our leftovers and headed to 18th Avenue, which Pinello said was once the heart of Bensonhurst's Italian community.

Pork stores, a dying tradition

We first stopped at the Bari Pork Store between 63rd Street and 64th Street. The shop's narrow interior is decorated with dozens of pig statues, paintings and pictures, as well as red and green garland that is strung from the ceiling.

Pork stores, as the name suggests, originally sold only pork products. According to owner George Firrantello, these shops were where you came for your sausage, and the butcher was where you went for meat.

Pork stores, he told us, are a dying tradition. There used to be around six to eight pork stores between 60th Street and 86th Street. Bari Pork Store is one of the last remaining. The store sells all sorts of meat products now, as well as sandwiches because, according to Firrantello, “if you wanna survive, you gotta make do.”

Pizza pizza!

There are a few pizzerias in the area, but we headed across the street on the corner to J&V Pizzeria, established in 1950 by Johnny Mortillaro and Vincent DeGrezia. It was the first spot in the area to sell pizza by the slice.

Here we ordered a grandma slice, which is rectangular with a thin crust. We watched as they slid the pizza into a smaller oven for a few minutes, where is was reheated to crispy perfection. I grabbed a can of cola because how can anyone have a slice of pizza without a soda? The marinara was savory and the slice was sprinkled with parmesan and dried oregano. I love a simple slice.

From there, we meandered down to DaVinci Pizzeria on 18th Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets. DaVinci was opened in 1966 by Fedele Gnerre, a “ self-taught pizza chef who hailed from Avellino, Italy ,” according to this bio. When Fedele Gnerre passed away about 22 years ago, his two sons, Angelo and Antonio Gnerre, took over.

Antonio Gnerre was behind the counter the day we arrived. He threw a fresh Sicilian pie into the oven, then scooped Italian ice into a paper cup and wrapped it in deli paper for a customer.

The Sicilian pies, which are thick and focaccia-like, are par-cooked with a bit of sauce in large square baking dishes before they're topped with shredded mozzarella about halfway through the cooking process, along with some racing stripes of sauce across the top. They’re slid back into the oven and continue to cook until the edges are crisp and the cheese has melted.

Antonio Gnerre cut the fresh pie into rectangles when it was done and handed a few slices to us on a tray lined with checkered red and white paper along with a pile of white paper plates and napkins.

Pinello and I sat in the back at a booth and enjoyed a slice, taking care not to completely burn our mouths on the piping hot cheese. Unlike the grandma slice from J&V, which was thin and crisp, the Sicilian was thick and cheesy. After two slices we were ready for something sweet before our final stop.

La dolce vita

The location of Villabate Alba , a pasticceria and gelateria a short walk from DaVinci on 18th Avenue between 70th and 71st streets, was originally the site of a bakery known as Alba, opened in 1932. Villabate first opened nearby on 72nd Street in 1978. When Alba's owner retired, Villabate took over the space and renamed it Villabate Alba.

Signs inside the shop point out where to go for cakes, pastries,and bread versus gelato and coffee. The ceiling is painted like the Sistine Chapel and religious statues line the shelves around the space.

Pinello ordered us each an espresso and I grabbed a cannoli for us to share. Celine Dion blasted through the speakers as we went outside to stand at a high top table. The cannoli filling was rich and creamy and the shell was crisp. Combined with the espresso shot, it was the perfect pick-me-up before our final meal at nearby Il Colosseo.

One last meal

About a 10 minute walk down 18th Avenue between 77th and 78th Streets is Il Colosseo Ristorante, which was established in 1991. The restaurant is large, with ample outdoor seating, and another large room in the back. We sat towards the front and I immediately ordered a glass of Sicilian white wine because “when in Rome” — or Bensonhurst, as it were.

Pinello couldn’t really focus on what to eat at this stage, I think I’d worn him out, so I took over and ordered us an antipasto platter and arancini (rice balls stuffed with meat and cheese) to start, plus vongole (linguini and clams in a white sauce), veal marsala, risotto Milanese and the insalata tricolore.

The simple salad of thinly sliced radicchio and endive, plus baby arugula, tossed with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper was the perfect dish at this stage in our day. The veal was pounded thin and the marsala sauce was creamy and sweet. The Milanese was cheesy and vibrant yellow from the saffron and we were entirely too full to finish anything.

As Pinello drove me home (and I am thankful for a ride with all of the leftovers, cheese, and breads that I “somehow” managed to acquire throughout the day), we talked about how Bensonhurst has always been a neighborhood of immigrants.

From Italians to Russians and now Chinese, the area has changed considerably since his family first arrived and since they’ve left, but it will always have a place in his heart. It's a place he can always return to for a sandwich, a slice or even some lemon ice.

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All of the restaurants mentioned in this article are in this Google Map , which you can save to your phone.