Once upon a time in Palermo, the abbess of the Matorana convent wanted to cook up something special for the local bishop’s Easter visit. She instructed the good sisters to form their famous almond-paste confections into the shapes of fruits and to hang them from the trees of the convent garden. The bishop was delighted, and Frutta di Matorana, the “Fruit of Matorana,” soon became a favorite of Sicilian aristocrats.
For centuries, almond paste was Sicily’s greatest export, prized as far north as the royal courts of Scandinavia. More recently, Sicilians have been bringing this artistry west—even to Brooklyn. Or, should I say, especially to Brooklyn. I’d been told that the only marzipan delicious enough and beautiful enough to compare with that from Villabate, a town near Palermo, was made in Brooklyn, at the Villabate Pasticceria & Bakery. Which is why, on a lovely spring day, I find myself on the N train from Manhattan, heading toward Bensonhurst.
On the ten-block walk from the 18th Avenue subway station to the shop, I pass through a Russian neighborhood. But when, at the produce stands, I begin to see not cabbage but cardoons, frying peppers, sweet anise, and eggplants, I know I’m nearing my destination.
The scents of bread, pastry, vanilla, lemon, cinnamon, and almonds greet me at the Villabate’s door. A circle of gleaming curved glass display cases are bursting with sweet delights, some familiar, some mysterious. Open racks hold semolina bread still warm from the oven. And filling the room’s center, banks of wire shelving hold brilliantly colored Mylar-wrapped packages of imported Italian sweets. Gathered with bows and pointed ceilingward, they shimmer like the stage-effects fire that used to peek out of cardboard windows in long-ago plays. The narrow, alley-like aisles of the shop feel like some kind of souk.
Patrons swarm around the store, then station themselves in wavy lines until they reach the counter, where they place their orders, mostly in Sicilian. Shopgirls and impatient customers roll their eyes as a fussily coiffed patron can’t make up her mind. This is not a place for “shopping” or questions: You know exactly what you want, or you move to the back of the line.I nudge my way forward to ask for Emanuele Alaimo, the owner. Assuming that I’m jumping the line, no one lets me pass. One man, with a look of silent rage, actually blocks my way. “I just want to see Emanuele,” I tell him. With a grumpy “Humph,” he ends the standoff. I’ve interrupted the rhythm. Just then, the kitchen door opens, and Emanuele enters the shop, giving me a glimpse of back-of-the-house bustle. A serious man in his fifties, he meets my jubilant greeting with a taciturn handshake. His gentle eyes sadden: He’s very busy, he explains. Can I return later? A nearby customer, noticing my disappointment (I’ve traveled all the way from Los Angeles to meet Emanuele), offers a suggestion. “Go see his brother. He has a shop, too,” she says, handing me her business card. “Tell him I sent you.”
Another ten blocks later, I land again in a deeply Sicilian area. I could be back at the Villabate—the Europa Pastry Shop is practically identical. Thrusting out my business card, I explain the nature of my visit to Nino Alaimo, a robust man in his early forties. In return, I get a big smile and a warm handshake while his wife, Cathy, sizes me up. “What are we standing here for?” she says. (I guess I’ve passed muster.) “Come in the back; we’ll show you around.”
In the spotless, white-tiled heart of the Europa, trays of sfingi, large puffs of pâte à choux, are being filled from giant pastry bags with ricotta cream or egg custard. A baker prepares sfogliatella, a Neapolitan clam-shaped pastry filled with a sweet porridge of ricotta and semolina. Racks of cannoli shells are being submerged in hot fat just until they’re crisp.
In a quiet corner, I spy the sweets I’m after, marzipan in various forms, in various states of completion: lemons, apples, pears, bananas, oranges, loquats. Hand-sculpted pigs in lifelike shades of porcine pink stand, their legs in a snow-bank of flour so that they dry evenly.
Reclining Easter lambs have been painted freehand, so each bears a subtly different expression—bemused, docile, snooty, and even “come hither.”
The shepherd of this flock is Giacomo Mauro, a wiry man with dark eyes and a thick crop of black hair. He tells me that he began to learn the art of pastrymaking as a boy in Sicily. Now, having lived in America for more than 30 years, he is the head baker for the Alaimo brothers. He’d be happy to show me his technique, he says. But now there’s more important business to attend to—lunch.
“You must stay,” Cathy and Nino insist as places are set on a wooden pastry table. Place mats are paper sheet-pan liners; dishes are disposable aluminum cake pans. Giacomo prepares a pasta with tuna in a tomato-cream sauce, followed by fried rings of squid with a squeeze of lemon. Both are served from large mixing bowls, and a crisp white Sicilian wine is poured. I think I may have stumbled into the best restaurant in the neighborhood.
As if a dinner bell is ringing on the streets of Bensonhurst, our party of 7 soon grows to 15. The back door admits a food importer, a mushroom distributor, the real estate broker who had given me her card, an executive from Italia Oggi, and a host of others. The large bowl of pasta barely notices the strain of its task. Conversation (mostly in Sicilian) is lively—especially as Nino recounts his family story.
In the early part of the 20th century, his great-grandfather, Vincenzo, came to America with his family from Villabate, Sicily. One daughter, Francesca, was homesick, pining for the man she loved. So Vincenzo sent her back to Sicily to marry. But when the newlyweds attempted to move to the States, they were turned away at Ellis Island because Francesca’s husband, Emanuele Alaimo, had tuberculosis. Sadly, they returned to Villabate. Emanuele died young, and his widow, blaming the tragedy on their rejection by the immigration authorities, vowed never again to return to America. But in 1968, one of their sons, Angelo, with his wife and children, did emigrate, fulfilling his grandfather’s dream.
Nino, then 11, remembers that the very day after they had arrived, his father, a bread baker by trade, found work at a Sicilian bakery in Brooklyn. “That’s what we came for,” said Nino. “To work.”
Eight years later, Angelo and his two sons, Emanuele and Nino, opened a bakery in Bensonhurst that made bread and cookies. Little by little, pastry was added. Over the next ten years, Nino would leave the business to follow other pursuits, then return, then leave again. Yet always, as if by a sacred vocation, baking called him back. Eventually, on his own, he opened the Europa. Now, Nino and Cathy are planning an expansion to include a café and restaurant. They’ve even set up a Web site, www.europapastry.com, to market their goods nationwide.
As lunch ends, with strong espresso and exquisite pastry, Giacomo clears the space in front of him and gets down to business. First, he takes a tray of the marzipan fruit, perfect representations but still looking like plaster. Then he mixes a bright lemon color using powdered food coloring and artificial alcohol. (New York State regulations prohibit the use of real alcohol by pastry shops.) Holding a brush straight down in one hand, he takes a “plaster” lemon in the other and, while twirling it in the palm of his hand, applies the color with a rapid flicking motion. Suddenly it’s a virtual lemon. He sets it on the tray beside the “naked” fruit. The contrast is startling.
Crab apples are colored in three stages, to reflect the hues of the real thing—yellow, then green, then red. The loquats require the most skill: After the characteristic orange is applied, Giacomo adds dents and brown accents for “ripeness.” Eye-feasting is one thing, but it pales next to the pleasure of actually eating these royal fruits. Upon taking a bite, the sugar melts, filling the palate with remarkable sweetness. Then comes the flavor of blanched almonds, still sweet from the sugar, but with an easy bitterness.
Although mesmerized by Giacomo’s skill, I have to tear myself away—I’ve promised to return to the Villabate. I bid Nino, Cathy, the bakers, and the shopgirls a long, warm Sicilian good-bye.
Back at the Villabate, things are a little calmer. Emanuele and his wife, Lina, invite me into the kitchen, which is still humming with activity. A baker surrounds a mountain of fig filling with an enormous piece of pastry dough. Rolling it down the table into a thick rope, he then cuts it into small cookies, ready for baking. Across the room, molds of tiramisù are being topped with lavish swirls of sweetened mascarpone cheese.
Bread is baked hourly, and in the baking room, loaves of semolina bread are being readied for the oven. As Emanuele, Lina, and I chat, he watches the swirl of activity, occasionally ducking off to give directions to the bakers. Evening has fallen, and it’s time for me to return to Manhattan. But Emanuele has another idea: “Go see my son. He has a shop on 86th Street.” It is, of course, ten blocks away.
“My first job was at the sink; that’s where everybody who comes to work here starts,” says 26-year-old Manny Alaimo, owner of the Bellaggio Pastry Shop. He bears a striking resemblance to his father, and like Emanuele, he has been in the pastry business almost all of his life. At the age of 10, he resented having to work, he says with a laugh, but at 14, that changed. “I liked making stuff and foolin’ around with the ingredients,” he remembers with a smile. “But best of all was how people really appreciated what I made.”
“When I was a kid, this part was my grandfather’s bread bakery,” Manny says. “The guy we sold it to made it a pastry shop and bigger. When I found out he was going to sell, I got it together to buy the store. It’s been a lotta work,” he adds. “But this shop means a lot to me.” As if on cue, trays of freshly baked cookies emerge from the kitchen. More than 12 hours after the workday has begun, the ovens keep rolling, just as they do at the Villabate and the Europa.
As I’m leaving the Bellaggio, I spot an elaborate cake decorated with a stunning sugar calla lily. “My brother-in-law makes those,” Manny says. “Does he have a shop, too?” I inquire frantically.
“Oh, no,” Manny says, “he works in back.”