It’s Sunday morning, and I’m standing on a corner in Bay Ridge, a not-trendy section of Brooklyn, eating panelle from a brown paper bag with the chef Jordan Frosolone. We greedily tear off pieces of the fried chickpea fritters, a street food specialty from Sicily—4,000 miles away yet somehow so close. We squeeze lemon over them. We savor them. And then they’re gone.
Chef Jordan and I have just concluded a tour of his favorite food markets, delis and snack stops in the neighborhood he’s called home for the past few years. It’s a long commute to the kitchen at Leopard at des Artistes, a revamped Italian restaurant founded by restaurateur Gianfranco Sorrentino (the man behind Il Gattopardo) in the Midtown space that was once home to the famed Cafe des Artistes. But Frosolone, raised in Chicago and trained in kitchens from Chicago and NYC to Florence and Spoleto, says it’s a great place for his family to call home—and the proximity to so many Italian markets doesn’t hurt!
The neighborhood is one of the most underrated Italian resources in the city. Manhattan’s Little Italy, the Bronx’s Arthur Avenue and close-in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens are famed for their Italian roots, food shopping, and restaurants, but Bay Ridge is a century-plus-old center of Italian immigrant culture, perhaps best known as the setting of the 1977 John Travolta film Saturday Night Fever.
Maybe the reason Frosolone feels so at home there is that he is one of New York City’s most underrated Italian-American chefs. Sitting in his car outside Joe’s of Avenue U, the source of our delectable panelle, he tells me of his incredible career. Early on, he focused on Italian cuisine from the north, cooking alongside the legendary Pino Luongo at Coco Pazzo in the 1990s, then exploring Tuscan cuisine closer during sojourns in Spoleto and Umbria.
From there, Frosolone focuses on his roots in Sicily, the birthplace of his grandparents, and he’s gone on to study and cook the peasant foods of southern Italy. He’s still fixated on the region and its cuisine, and he ends up telling me that these days, “I’m trying to be more of an Italian grandmother and less of a New York chef.”
Unlike a nonna who keeps her shopping secrets closely guarded, Frosolone is more than willing to take La Cucina Italiana on a tour of Bay Ridge to explore its hidden gems. Here are five must-visit stops in this South Brooklyn enclave with deep Italian-American roots.
Cosentino’s Fish Market: From the street, this storefront fish market looks contemporary, but it’s a decades-old, family-run spot that only stocks fresh catches and mostly in-season seafood. The store stocks some dry goods too, but fish is the main draw—and service. As Frosolone points out, “It’s literally a father, son, and daughter who have been in there every time I’ve gone.”
Anthony’s Butcher and Deli: in this nondescript corner spot, the deli cases are filled with house-made sausages and cuts of meat and the aisles tightly lined with food products. Frosolone notes that it’s a neighborhood favorite for Italian hero sandwiches, touted on the awning as Brooklyn’s best, but he uses it as an old-school butcher where a chef or seasoned cook can request special meats. For Frosolone, Anthony’s butcher helps him source sweetbreads.
D. Coluccio & Sons: At this spacious grocer in the adjacent neighborhood of Bensonhurst, Frosolone’s eyes light up as he strolls aisles packed with imported pastas and jars of Sicilian dried peppers and other specialty items. He says that this is where he comes to buy neonata, the Calabrian fish sauce he uses in his Struncatura, one of the dishes that has earned him notice from New York City’s top food critics.
Villabate: This corner bakery and pastry shop opened by a Sicilian family in 1979 feels even older—like a fixture from an Italian village from the turn of the 20th century. Here, patrons line up and point to cases of colorful Sicilian cakes and pastries to place their orders, while older Italian-Americans sip espresso and caffé lungo from the counter. One of the few true destinations in Bay Ridge, the place is so old-school that it’s banned photography from the shop to cut down on Instagram tourists (though not so old-school that they don’t have an Instagram account themselves).
Joe’s of Avenue U: The source of our panelle is the counter at this Bay Ridge fixture, a take-out counter and full restaurant that Frosolone refers to as a “tavola calda,” or hot table place. Here, patrons come for the arancini and other Sicilian street-food specialties to go or stay in the brightly lit, mural-adorned dining room for veal parmigiana, spaghetti with clams and other Italian-American favorites.