Searching for Italy (Part I)

 Searching for Italy (Part I)

The Mazzola Bakery on Brooklyn’s Henry St.

     We recently had an opportunity to sit outside the pop-up Mazzola Bakery (temporarily located on Henry St.) on a bench observing a very different world.  The street traffic was there all right along with passersby exercising their dogs and themselves.  Others briskly shuttled in and out of this neighborhood bakery for their morning coffees, loaves of bread, and assorted Italian pastries.  Nearby, cars were parked at the curb with shoehorn precision while joggers wove through this early morning milieu decked out in the latest in earbud electronics and haut couture designed for sweat.  All the while city sparrows hopped and head bobbed about underfoot like robotic vacuums gathering crumbs better than an altar boy with a paten.  This was a world apart from our normal quiet habitat.  This crosshatch of streets wasn’t Italy but it was Italian, what we so missed and just what we were searching for.

This bakery is home to ever-popular “Lard Bread.”  Don’t let the name put you off.  For many, the thought of lard isn’t accompanied by fond memories.  Thankfully, my mom hardly used it, preferring Crisco Shortening instead.  When she used Crisco to make pie crusts, I’ve no recollection of

With Patience, Some Might Actually Slice
Lard Bread Instead of Ripping It Apart

ever licking those spoons.  However, I do remember her collecting drippings of fat and when she had enough, she’d render it and use it to make soap.  It was a technique she’d learned during the shortages of WWII.  She would pour a few inches of her white mélange into a cardboard box.  When it had dried, she would cut it, like a sheet cake, into hand-size cubes.  I don’t recall whether they floated, and they certainly lacked a fragrant scent.  Along with long-lasting Colgate Octagon soap made with lye, it was our staple.  In Germany more recently, we were surprised when a bowl of snow-white spread, that I’d lathered on a slice of bread, turned out to be the real thing.  One taste and a query of our waitress put us off.  Then again cultural conditioning of fat Americans may have played a hand.  With a name like lard bread, you’d think it would be a tough sell, but loaves of this concoction made with salami, sharp provolone, black pepper, and a touch of rendered fat fly out of Mazzola’s door.  When we discovered it came with the pastry taste of a cornetto (brioche), small samples soon had us tearing off fist-sized chunks as we headed off down Brooklyn’s Henry Street, one of the pathways through Carroll Gardens, a grid of tree-lined streets in the sprawl of Metropolitan New York.  Forget the adage “When Pigs Fly,” because they do, right off the shelves there in Brooklyn.  I think I now understand—this bread alone may explain the streams of waist-conscious joggers flooding the sidewalks.

A walk through Carroll Gardens along shady streets intermixed with brownstone apartment buildings and shops of all sorts was a pleasant getaway awakening.  Ours had been a few-hour road trip 

The Urban Tapestry of Carroll Garden, Brooklyn, New York

to visit our son who lives in this charming neighborhood named after Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence.  Absent front porches and a “no eye contact” attitude, people sat on their high-rise of steps to greet passing neighbors.  The area was alive, teeming with everything you would need with the internal vitality of a village.  A few steps from the bakery, we came upon a reminder of just how Italian the area was when we passed “The Society of the Citizens of Pozzallo” where many of its Italian residents had come from only to arrive in Carroll Garden circa 1900.  It was formed to: 

"Promote fellowship and friendship amongst its members and to educate them to the American ideals in order to transition them to the American way of life and American citizenship."

These fine words led me to a Google search that pinpointed Pozzallo on the beach-lined southern coast

Henry Street Homage to the
"Citizens of Pozzallo Way"

of Sicily, not far from Ragusa.  Pozzallo to Henry Street would have been one hell of a “transition.”  A sign added by NYC authorities just beneath the Henry Street sign (photo) declaring it Citizens of Pozzallo Way speaks loudly to how these immigrant citizens from Pozzallo helped make this neighborhood, this city, this their adopted country, great. 

Stairs to Moonstruck Oven

Our eye-opening adventure continued when just steps beyond this ethnic social club, on the corner where Henry intersects Sackett Street, we happened upon a nondescript landmark.  Passing it you would never recognize it as anything other than a stairwell leading from the sidewalk into a basement.  It was as unassuming as that.  Without ceremony, no big to-do, absent a plaque or even the blur of graffiti memorializing the spot, it lies unrecognizable but for those who recall that delightful 1987 movie, that offered a humorous glimpse into the Italian-American lifestyle, Moonstruck. 

Moonstruck Cast

This was where, in the sweltering heat of a bread furnace, the scene was filmed where Ronny Cammareri, “no freaking monument to justice”, cried out “I lost my hand, I lost my bride.”  Steps away was another entry, this one the door to Ronny’s apartment.  We hit the trifecta when our son pointed out a storefront whose interior was used as Ronny’s Bread Shop which coincidently is the real home of the Mazzola Bakery, at that moment under renovation.  Wow, Henry Street, a.k.a. “Citizens of Pozzallo Way”, might also be dubbed “Italian Cinema Boulevard” in tribute to this distinctive cinematic icon. 

Entry to Ronny's
Apartment

To this point, it had been like a nostalgic walk in the MGM backlot but quickly our movie trivia got up to date when later we passed current “Licensed to Kill, 007 Agent, Commander James Bond’s (Daniel Craig) home a few streets away from our son’s apartment.  Over our entire stay, we were grateful there was no gunfire, not a single explosion. On second thought, the peace and quiet we enjoyed might have been due to it being a United Kingdom MI-6 safe house.  Remarkably, as opposed to his predecessors, here is a James Bond who occasionally bleeds.  He

Ronny's Moonstruck Market
Storefront on Corner of
 Union & Henry  

could be holding up there recovering from wounds incurred in his latest movie adventure “No Time To Die” as he did in Casino Royale at stunning Villa del Balbianello on Lake Como. (it doubled as a recovery hospital in that movie).  Some of this latest adventure unfortunately was not filmed in Carroll Gardens but in the Sassi of ancient Matera, in the region of Basilicata.  Wouldn’t you know, Matera is only hours away from Calitri.  One way or another, I suspected we were getting closer to real Italy.

— Stay Tuned for “Searching for Italy (Part II)” —

From That Rogue Tourist
Paolo