Since Torrisi Italian Specialties opened last year on Mott Street in NoLIta, the dinner menu has offered innovative twists on traditional Italian fare. Their lunch menu, however, mounted on the wall over their front-of-house food counter, has had strictly familiar items: chicken parm, turkey heroes and Italian combos.
They’re not the only ones bringing it back to the old school. Along with This Little Piggy Had Roast Beef, Oxley’s Carvery and Bowery Beef, Torrisi is part of a new wave of deli-themed eateries paying homage to a nearly extinct culinary tradition where specialties are laboriously prepared in-house by hand and carved to order.
PHOTOS: OLD-SCHOOL SLICERS RATE CITY’S NEW SANDWICHES
“You mean the guys who have been copying what we’ve been doing for 62 years?” asks David Greco, behind the counter of Mike’s Deli in The Bronx, which he took over from his father in the ’90s. He counts Robert DeNiro, who orders the Calabrese-style roast pork sandwich, as a regular.
So, do the new schoolers make the cut? Only Greco, Jake Dell (of Katz’s Delicatessen) and Nicky and son Vinny Defonte (of the eponymous Red Hook sandwich shop), who together share 274 years of making the best sandwiches within the five boroughs, can truly attest. During a recent midday slump, we brought the bunch to give word on the pretenders to the throne. Here’s how they stacked up.