DeROBERTIS PASTICCERIA
ITALIAN PASTRIES
The Times got it right when they said that walking into DeRobertis Pasticceria & Caffe on First Avenue in the East Village "is to enter the Italian immigrant experience of the early 20th Century." The tile floor and pressed-tin ceiling are original and not much has changed here since 1904. The shop is still run by the family, and granddaughter Annie was kind enough to chat with me about its history and future.
Annie's family is a local institution. Her father’s father started DeRobertis and her mother’s father started Lanza’s restaurant down the block. Annie first went to work in the shop when she was 11, folding cake boxes and filling cannoli by hand with a knife. I found her on a quiet Friday afternoon sitting in the cafe, reading about city politics in the Post and wondering aloud if she shouldn't just go back to Bari, where her grandfather came from.
She remembers the East Village when it was still filled with Italian and Jewish businesses, whole shops dedicated to single products: pork, fish, freshly made pasta that hung in the windows. “Eleventh Street was all butchers and chicken markets,” she told me, “I used to go with my mother. I was terrified. My mother would pick out a chicken and, boom, they killed it right there.” She recalls the First Avenue Market as a whole world where you could get everything: cheese, clothes, stationery, fabric, buttons, pickles, hats. And the East Village was a place where no one locked their doors. “I’d go into your apartment and leave a note: I borrowed your sugar. And did you care? Of course not.”
The neighborhood has changed tremendously since those days and especially so in the past few years. I asked about her experiences dealing with the newest immigrants to the East Village, the young and affluent. She told me about impatient customers who whine about waiting in line, ignore her help as they talk on cell phones, then want service "right away, right away, right away." But worst of all are the Starbucks people:
“People come in and tell me I don’t know how to make cappuccino," Annie said, incredulous. (She's only been making the beverage for 50 years.) "They tell me, 'Starbucks makes it this way.' I tell them, 'I’m here before Starbucks.' They want flavors. I tell them, 'I got flavors. You want a flavor? I’ll put it in.' Put it in? They look at me," with a look of disbelief. "Do these people really think the coffee bean grows in flavors? Like it comes in hazelnut and mint? These are people with college educations. But they want Starbucks. So I tell them, very nicely I say," with a wave of her hand, "So go to Starbucks.”
After 9/11 it seemed the older people moved out and the younger ones moved in. The traditional Italian pastries don’t do as well as they used to. Millefoglie and sfogliatelle aren’t as popular as the “fancier stuff” that DeRobertis offers, like their many mousses introduced by head baker, Tony, who came from Ecuador and has been with the store since he was 18. He’s family now.
There’s a lot of La Famiglia in this family business. Annie’s nephew John helps her and her brothers run the shop. He’s fourth generation and counting. The family owns the building and, thankfully, no one’s interested in selling. Every year, 35 members from all 5 generations gather on Thanksgiving for a big dinner in the cafe. They bring food and warm it up in the baker’s ovens down in the basement. I asked Annie if she thought the store would last through the next generation.
“Like my father used to say,” she told me with a shrug, “It’s here if they want it and if they don’t, what can I do?”
More on DeROBERTIS PASTICCERIA
Opened on April 20, 1904 by Paolo DeRobertis, the pasticceria was originally called Caffe Pugliese in honor of Paolo’s Italian birthplace in Puglia, Italy. In 1928, Paolo trained his son John DeRobertis Sr. and passed the business on to him. Today, it is run by John DeRobertis Jr. who grew up on East 11th Street but now commutes in each day from Nutley, NJ to make sure his family’s legacy continues. He is proud of the fact that everything is baked on the premises. The original ornately-tiled floors and pressed-tin ceiling still remain today.
So now back to that mob connection. It’s a pretty well known fact that gangsters like their cannolis, so why wouldn’t they hang out in a pastry shop owned by fellow Italian immigrants? DeRobertis was considered the “safe” mafia hangout of the East Village. Local boy Lucky Luciano often hung out there in the 20’s, holding meetings in the back room with fellow mobster and Lower East Sider Meyer Lansky. In fact, actor Vincent Piazza, who plays Luciano on Boardwalk Empire, spent time in DeRobertis as research for his role.
The mafia connection to the bakery only grew as the years went on and the mob’s stronghold intensified. In 1935, mobster Mike Sabatelli, aka “Mike the Boss,” was arrested at DeRobertis with several others for running an “Italian Lottery” out of the pastry shop. During the 70’s it was a favorite hangout for Carmine “Lilo” Galante, then boss of the Bonanno crime family. In fact, Galante is believed to have murdered Carlo Tresca outside of John’s Italian Restaurant. In 1991, eight members of the Gambino crime family were indicted on murder and other charges. One of these men was John “Handsome Jack” Giordano, who had assumed some of John Gotti’s power while he, at the time, was in prison awaiting trial. The arrests stemmed from the crew’s “office” in DeRobertis where they ran “businesses” of gambling, lone sharking, extortion, drug and weapon dealing, and the sale of forged credit cards. Wiretaps were placed in DeRobertis in addition to a presence of undercover cops and informants. Giordano’s uncle, Joseph “Joe Piney” Armone, had first started running operations out of the pastry shop when he became John Gotti’s second underboss (his first, Frank DeCicco was killed in 1986). Armone went to prison in 1988 for racketeering, at which time matters were handed over to Giordano, who would receive a one-year sentence after the DeRobertis raid (he was shot and killed in 1995 on the Upper East Side). According to a New York Times Articles written about the 1991 arrests, shortly after the commotion everyone went back to merrily eating their Pignoli cookies and sipping espresso. We can’t say we blame them by the looks of those delicious confections.
