A Distant Dolce

November 04, 2021

A Distant Dolce

150 miles for cannoli

When I was a kid, my father worked in lower Manhattan, on Varick Street, at one of the many printing shops there. This was long before it became multi-million dollar co-ops and the entire industry left first the area, then the country, and now the planet. He was a "plate maker" and press operator, doing high-end lithographs and coffee table books; Automobile Quarterly was an example. I've still got some he brought home.

About two or three times each month, he'd also stop by Ferrara's in Little Italy and pick up some scungilli with fresh bread to sop up the spicy marinara sauce that covered what otherwise could have been rubber bands, and a separate plain white box, tied with red and white string, filled with cannoli. He'd carry these treats home on the LIRR (that's "el eye double R" or simply "the train" which is different from the subway, which of course you know...).

I suspect he acquired his taste for each from his parents, both from Sicily and arriving in the United States through that other island, Ellis, oh so many years ago. For me, I can skip the scungilli, but not the cannoli.

Leave da gun; take da cannoli.

150 miles for some is not a problem.

There happens to be an unexpectedly good Italian restaurant in Hereford, Arizona, of all places: Pizzeria Mimosa. They embrace the "slow food" idea, everything fresh and local where possible. And I have a very pleasant 150 mile route to their back patio. Let's go...