Welcome to Little Italy Italian Food Center, a place as close as you can get to fine dining in Italy. If you want the real thing, the real deal for authentic Italian anything, then you want frequent Little Italy Italian Food Center and Restaurant. Their website is inviting and taste tempting, but their newest online foray is their Facebook page, and you really should "like" it and add it to your page.
Immaculate, imported, and extraordinary flavor!
Why? Because if you live even remotely close to Phillipsburg, NJ, you want to make this restaurant your dining and shopping center of choice. The center is spotless; you could eat in their restrooms they are that immaculate. Each time I visit, it feels like they have just built and occupied the building. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, we were taught for 12 years of Catholic school. At Little Italy, cleanliness is goodliness.
Fabulous Food from Little Italy Italian Food Center
A rich array of healthy snacks await your palate and your purchase. Always very hard to resist, this case, nestled next to the cheeses, supplies our snacks. Hard to argue with quality, taste, and the natural nutrient goodness of a Mediterranean diet.
When it comes to gelato, Little Italy's is home made with recipes straight from Italy. I cannot tell the difference between the Trevi Fountain gelato shop in Rome and Little Italy. Texture, rich flavors, unusual combinations (check the labels) make choosing dessert difficult. And I did not take a snapshot of the dessert case--to die for...
Where else can you buy raffle tickets (3 for $5) on a 20 pound Italian Chocolate Easter Egg? Let me tell you this is chocolate, Italian style, larger than life. Where else can you purchase Italian Chocolate Eggs in any pound weight?
Then there's this smaller egg, 15 pounds. I love that this store lives large, with a big approach to merchandise.
And a large part of that philosophy comes from the center's owner, Francesco. Kinder, dearer, customer friendly--you just won't find--anywhere. He lives to please, and he will custom cook anything for you, on the drop of a phone call. In between cooking specialty items (keep checking his Facebook page for daily additions), he mingles with his customers, shifting between Italian, Southern dialect and English. He is the perfect young man for this business, and he makes dining--and shopping--a pleasure, a delightful experience for palate and pocketbook. One of my all-time favorite places and people, I encourage you to spend some time, on and offline, with Little Italy Italian Food Center.
The nearly finished first semester at school has been challenging. Flexible is our word for the year, and by the end of this last construction move, well, let's just say we tested our mettle. With budgets, mid-markings, 2 holidays, and a surprise move in the offering, it was so easy to get behind with the things that matter: staying connected with your life. We celebrated, to our credit, my mother's birthday early at her favorite place, Little Italy Italian Food Store and Restaurant in Phillipsburg, NJ. It's a one-of-a-kind-place, charming by any standard. Delicious aromas waft as you enter, and homespun hospitality and Southern Italy accented speech abounds.
Mother is 87 years young, and on these photos, I think she has never looked better. I think you will agree as you watch this slideshow celebrating her milestone birthday (after her bouts with surgery and conditions, every birthday is a milestone).
According to MaryJanesFarm, there are many types of farmers, hence farms. Honestly, before finding this magazine serendipitously at Barnes & Noble on a casual stroll to the Starbuck's concession, I would not have considered Frank, Cathy, and Uncle John's contiguous properties a farm. How wrong I have been. Judging by the blogs on MJFs website, we visited a suburban farm, Italian style. And what a delight it is!
My husband met the Sarullos and John Virella decades ago when they opened Villa Virella. I met them only a few years ago, when we became regulars about twice a month, plus special holidays, and we always stayed at their cottage. When they retired and sold their business, luckily we remained friends and even celebrate holidays together. It is always an event when we are invited to visit, and the food is beyond fabulous. It is very difficult to see the lights, but they are made from bottles of fine Italian wine, the bottoms cut with a tile cutter, then sealed in thin copper strips. Beautiful upcycling. They did something similar with creating a candle holder.
We were invited for pizza, but what an array of food. Bruscetta with grilled eggplant and roasted peppers, with optional marinated slivers of garlic. Add artichoke hearts, Bellinis (echoes of Venice and Harry's Place), olives, fresh basil, and an assortment of red and white wines, and you have the first course. Then the pizzas: sauce (homemade) and cheese, artichoke, sardine, eggplant and a mix of all of the white pizza ingredients. Fabulous. I should have known better; then pork tenderloin cooked in the pizza oven, and garden-fresh salad. Desserts included a lemon semi-something--can't remember anything except the goodness of it all. Cold for a hot day. A wonderful pound cake from Philadephia (a noted bakery I can't recall), and shortbread. Cathy's famous fresh blueberry pie. What an amazing feast.
The pizza oven is actually a small room, with a heated tile floor for winter, and two areas, one to the left of the oven with a granite surface (soon to be installed) and a sink set in matching granite (also soon to be complete). When finished, it will be a self-contained room that adds auxiliary heat for the farm kitchen in winter. The entire concept from start to finish took a good year and became a post-retirement project for Uncle John, aided by Frank and Cathy. Everything is a family affair with them, and their closeness is enviable.
Returning to the Villa, now as always, a center for family gatherings, no longer a business, but the name lingers. It is synonymous with the finest hospitality, the best cuisine, and a piece of Italy at home. It is almost like being back at the Villa for a weekend, only instead, just for a day, but a lovely long day. I love the people, and visiting is always coming home.
When they return from a month in Italy, their next project, commencing probably next year, is to make a screen-in roofed balcony that you enter from the pizza room. I can hardly wait.
Where else can you buy raffle tickets (3 for $5) on a 20 pound Italian Chocolate Easter Egg? Let me tell you this is chocolate, Italian style, larger than life. Where else can you purchase Italian Chocolate Eggs in any pound weight?
According to MaryJanesFarm, there are many types of farmers, hence farms. Honestly, before finding this magazine serendipitously at Barnes & Noble on a casual stroll to the Starbuck's concession, I would not have considered Frank, Cathy, and Uncle John's contiguous properties a farm. How wrong I have been. Judging by the blogs on MJFs website, we visited a suburban farm, Italian style. And what a delight it is!
My husband met the Sarullos and John Virella decades ago when they opened Villa Virella. I met them only a few years ago, when we became regulars about twice a month, plus special holidays, and we always stayed at their cottage. When they retired and sold their business, luckily we remained friends and even celebrate holidays together. It is always an event when we are invited to visit, and the food is beyond fabulous. It is very difficult to see the lights, but they are made from bottles of fine Italian wine, the bottoms cut with a tile cutter, then sealed in thin copper strips. Beautiful upcycling. They did something similar with creating a candle holder.
Add artichoke hearts, Bellinis (echoes of Venice and Harry's Place), olives, fresh basil, and an assortment of red and white wines, and you have the first course. Then the pizzas: sauce (homemade) and cheese, artichoke, sardine, eggplant and a mix of all of the white pizza ingredients. Fabulous. I should have known better; then pork tenderloin cooked in the pizza oven, and garden-fresh salad. Desserts included a lemon semi-something--can't remember anything except the goodness of it all. Cold for a hot day. A wonderful pound cake from Philadephia (a noted bakery I can't recall), and shortbread. Cathy's famous fresh blueberry pie. What an amazing feast.
The pizza oven is actually a small room, with a heated tile floor for winter, and two areas, one to the left of the oven with a granite surface (soon to be installed) and a sink set in matching granite (also soon to be complete). When finished, it will be a self-contained room that adds auxiliary heat for the farm kitchen in winter. The entire concept from start to finish took a good year and became a post-retirement project for Uncle John, aided by Frank and Cathy. Everything is a family affair with them, and their closeness is enviable.
Returning to the Villa, now as always, a center for family gatherings, no longer a business, but the name lingers. It is synonymous with the finest hospitality, the best cuisine, and a piece of Italy at home. It is almost like being back at the Villa for a weekend, only instead, just for a day, but a lovely long day. I love the people, and visiting is always coming home.
