Take a look at the building right in front of you. It might just look like standard brick and mortar, but for over a century, this was the epicenter of a massive Italian family drama... and maybe even the birthplace of the hero sandwich.
This was Manganaro's Grosseria Italiana. It started in eighteen ninety-three when Ernest Petrucci opened a wine and grocery store. When Prohibition hit in nineteen nineteen, the nationwide law making alcohol illegal, he handed the keys to his nephew from Naples, James Manganaro. James bought the building in nineteen twenty-seven and started slinging massive sandwiches.
If you check your screen, I have a picture showing the old storefront from two thousand and seven.
After James passed away, his siblings took over. In nineteen fifty-five, they invented a six-foot-long sandwich called the Hero-Boy for a publicity stunt. It worked beautifully. A family member even ended up on a national television quiz show, and they opened a dedicated sandwich shop right next door.
But here is where it gets messy. The family split the businesses, sparking a bitter rivalry. One side took the grocery store, the other took the sandwich shop. They ended up in nasty lawsuits over the trademarked name and a telephone hotline for party sandwiches. The grocery store even had a vintage neon sign from the nineteen thirties, but they permanently turned it off in the year two thousand just so the sandwich shop next door could not benefit from its glow.
Legal battles and waning popularity finally shut the doors in twenty twelve.
That quiet closure marked the end of an era for this local culinary titan. Whenever you are ready to keep exploring, let's amble on over to our next spot.
