Few places represent the festival’s revisionist sector better than Parm, the Torrisi outpost at 248 Mulberry, which this year hosted a stand hawking Sadelle’s bagels. Bagels have no connection whatsoever to Italian eating, but the osmosis of city life has made them essential breakfast fodder for many transplant families, mine included. These particular delicacies are in line with the usual Torrisi approach, attempting to replicate the spirit of classic cuisine by scaling back modern additions, which in this case meant small, airy bagels with a pronounced center hole and the obligatory shatter crust. Formerly known as East River Bread, Melissa Weller’s pop-up was a big hit at last year’s Smorgasburg, but vanished before I had the chance to visit. Now, the newly formed Major Food Group has scooped up both the former Per Se / Roberta’s baker and her bagels, and will be installing them as one of the vendors in some soon-to-announced breakfast palace. A bit pricey at $4, the bagel was nonetheless a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, perfectly seed spackled and crisp, another argument for mothballing the swollen monstrosities that dominate today’s bagel market.
Some might say that zeppole don’t belong here, since they’re about as Italian as Panettone and show up without fail at these kinds of events. But few things walk the line between authentic and generic so clumsily. I can’t imagine the original Italian dough balls being anywhere near this leaden, and while the belly bombs doled out at San Gennaro and a thousand other feasts have their own proud history, they’re still barely distinguishable from other fried dough concoctions, the Italian-American equivalent to Munchkins. As a kid I would buy a dozen for $5, eat five, suffer terrible stomach cramps, and then take the rest home to toast them the next day, a maneuver which revealed how quickly these things can soak an entire paper bag through with grease. Nonetheless, given the choice between these or cannoli, I went with the more feast-oriented option, and the zeppole, served in seemingly identical configurations from nigh-dozens of vendors here, were enjoyable even as a formality.
As you walk south toward Canal the feast begins to dissipate, its heavy odors mingling with the equally dense effluvia of Chinese cooking. This is the boundary zone, with the last outpost of Italianness being E. Rossi & Co, an ancient t-shirt shop that functions as a catch-all for any remotely Italian cultural signifier, selling Sopranos license plates and ‘Hug Me, I’m Half Italian’ baby onesies. The ‘Half Italian’ hedge seems telling, and I’m half suspicious this shop has actually been taken over by Chinese owners, judging by the people I’ve seen manning the store.