Tell any New Yorker that you’re going to Little Italy on Mulberry Street in lower Manhattan and the first thing they’ll do is stare deeply into your eyes, trying to ascertain whether you are all right. The second thing they’ll do is say: “Don’t go there. Go to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. That’s the real Little Italy.”
Then they might offer you more unsolicited information, saying that there are no Italians in the Little Italy on Mulberry Street and the restaurants there serve overpriced, mediocre red-sauce slop to gullible tourists in search of authenticity. And they’re not wrong about that.
I wanted to get a sense of what makes Arthur Avenue the real Little Italy vis-à-vis the more well-trammelled tourist-choked Manhattan version, so I took the B Train from my Greenwich Village apartment north to the Bronx. This 12-mile journey takes an hour, and includes a 20-minute walk from Fordham Street tube station to the Belmont neighbourhood, home to Arthur Avenue. Its somewhat laborious location is the first indication that you’re not going to see many tourists here.
Once you hit Arthur Avenue, you need not check the map to make sure you’re there. Arthur – or, I should say, Arturo – announces himself loud and clear. The façades of the one- and two-storey buildings that flank the street loudly proclaim “Ristorante Italiano”. And they are molto: Mario’s, Enzo’s, Frankie’s, Dominick’s, Pasquale’s, Roberto’s.
Wedged between this riot of patriarchal restaurants are Italian delis, Italian grocers, Italian cafés and Italian bakeries. Italian flags are nearly ubiquitous. As I ambled down Arthur Avenue, I saw locals marching down the pavements carrying pizza boxes, enormous tins of San Marzano tomatoes and plus-sized packages of mozzarella…