The Longshoreman makes a comeback

Sitting across from Manhattan on Columbia Street, The Longshoreman, founded by Michelle Ewan and Lisa Detwiler over a year ago, is restaurant that aspires to reach back into Carroll Gardens’ proud history.

 “We’ve tried to bring our love of Italy and Italian culture into the making of The Longshoreman,” says Michelle, during an afternoon interview with the two.

They banter back and forth as I sit there, eager to hear more. Wearing an apron, Michelle is the creative force of the two while Lisa is the quantitative force.

At the core of the restaurant’s success is their partnership, their openness and trust. They are family to each other. And as any Italian knows, great food is made of more than just ingredients. It’s made with love: love of family, love of friends. 

The Longshoreman finds the right balance between honoring an older neighborhood of Brooklyn and bringing something new to it as well. After all, what makes New York City so vibrant are changes brought in by people from other places. New York City has always been a place that people create. 

 “This is the thing. We have a modern Italian menu. Kevin Noccoli, our chef, mixes up old and new. We make our pasta fresh in-house. Prosciutto di Parma, Margherita pizzas. A half chicken. We even have a hamburger on the menu. But what really gets me is how we’ve become a place people come to find comfort. Families. People who’ve lived in the neighborhood all their lives. And people new to the neighborhood.”

 “It’s funny, people come into the restaurant to show us pictures of what the space looked like fifty years ago,” adds Michelle.

“They even bring us pastries from Staten Island, from Brooklyn.”

“The space was once a shoe store,” says Michelle showing me a picture one of the old-timers brought to her. Now passing a picture to me of the original Longshoreman, she adds, “And of course, this is the restaurant that the neighborhood knew and loved.”

“We had big shoes to fill.”

“We’re one of them now and we love that.” 

And that’s what makes the Longshoreman an echo of the past with one foot in the future. Old-timer Brooklynites are tough, maybe a little rough around the edges sometimes, but everyone looks out for each other.  

And that sounds about as old-time Brooklyn as you can get.   

Nino Pantano reminisces about the Longshoreman’s past

I recall as a child that my father Santo (Sam) had a shoe store at that location. He had a X-Ray machine and all the kids would use it to see their feet. Later on, it was banned because of X-Ray exposure.

Next door was the Happy Hour movie theater. I have a photo of my Dad with a soldier who assisted him in the store with a partial view of the Happy Hour. Behind them, the theater marquee showed that The Green Hornet was being featured. The other theater, The Luna, would show the silent film, Cecil B. DeMille’s King of Kings. at Easter time. I believe Jack Warner portrayed Jesus in this remarkable film.

When I attended St. Francis College on Court and Butler Streets, I would walk to my father’s shoe store on Columbia Street. He moved to 235 from 215 Columbia Street. The famed Columbia Street Clock was in front of the Florsheim Shoe Store. The famed Gallo boys would occasionally walk in and “do some business.” My father told my kid brother Robert to help Joey Gallo with his shoes and Robert, ever defiant, said loudly to Joey, “I’m not helping you, you’re a crook.” My father Sam tried to stifle Robert but Joey, ever gallant and into Sartre, said, “Sam, Leave the kid alone, I am a crook!” and they all had a good laugh.

I remember the pushcarts with fish, calamari, vegetables and fruits. My brother Frank would also assist my Dad and my Uncle Cologero (Kelly) in 1947 during the great blizzard on December 26, 1947. My father walked from our house on 83rd Street and 15th Avenue near Bay Ridge to the shoe store. He slept there for a week and sold galoshes, boots and snowshoes. He said he stopped at 10 bars and had 10 shots of whiskey to survive the trip. We had over two feet of snow in about 12 hours that day, and the city was frozen over.

Ironically in 1987, my wife Judy and I moved to the new condos at Columbia Street across the street from my father’s old shoe store. Decades before, my Uncle Kelly befriended Virgilio SantaMaria, whose photography studio was on the top floor of the shoe store. Virgilio was a distinguished old man who told me of the great tenor Enrico Caruso who visited his studio. My uncle “Kelly” would chat with Virgilio’s cousin Enrico, who was a scientist and worked on the Atomic bomb. He told Kelly, “Your longshoremen live better than I do!” He was the great scientist Enrico Fermi.

[pullquote]Many of the old timers still fondly remember “Sal, the hatter.” I don’t know if he made hats, repaired hats or sold hats, but his name is spoken with reverence.[/pullquote]

I also met Mondo the midget. There used to be a photo of Mondo with the pet lion adopted by the Gallo boys. Mondo, who was really a dwarf, was a gangster wannabe, and his job was to feed the lion. I saw him one day standing in the window next to Cafiero’s Restaurant and I shook his hand as we exchanged cordial greetings. A photo of Mondo and the lion adorned many a window in the neighborhood.

Marilyn Monroe and her husband, writer Arthur Miller, who lived in Brooklyn Heights at the time, dined at Cafiero’s. We met “Sharkey” as he was called, the son of Cafiero, who told us that a customer went to his father to compliment him on having such a fine waiter as his son and he was giving him a gift. The gift was two tickets to see Enrico Caruso at the Metropolitan Opera in Pagliacci. When Sharkey was 90, he was interviewed with me on Live at Five on Channel 4 in a special on my Enrico Caruso show.

Frank Sacco owned Sacco’s department store (dry goods store as it used to be called) and Bobby Russo was a salesman in the store. Bobby, a very popular neighborhood fixture, is a great fountain of stories about the good old days. The bank was on the corner of Columbia and Union Street. Sessa learned his lessons from Giannini’s Bank in San Francisco that did not fail during the earthquake in 1906 and was the mentor banker savior to many on Columbia Street during the depression. Many puppeteers and actors were sustained by Sessa’s bank. Today the former bank is a pre-K school run by the Department of Education.

Ferdinando’s Foccaceria has been feeding its customers good Sicilian fare since 1904 with visits from many film stars and personalities. Pasta con le sarde, panelles and vlastede were sold even when the neighborhood was in wreckage.

The House of Pizza & Calzone, whose owners John and Onofrio, served us pizza, meatball heroes and great calzones. It still welcomes us with Paul Di Augustino and staff. Who needs Manhattan when we have great Italian food here? Bruce Springsteen had fresh mozzarellas sent to him from Joe Balzano’s Latticini Barese on Union Street. Springsteen’s family were mostly Italian and treasured these delicious foods from South Brooklyn.

In the 1970s, the sewer project left a deep trench for years on Columbia Street. Robert Moses, the master builder of highways at the time, had his expressways desecrate many structures and neighborhoods and the Columbia Street, Red Hook, South Brooklyn neighborhoods were a mess. Like East Berlin, they were dead.

My Uncle Kelly was passing the old neighborhood and saw the wreckers ball descending on the old Florsheim shoe store. He told the construction crew to stop. He did the sign of the cross and sadly nodded for them to continue.

Uncle Kelly lived to visit our home, see Columbia Street reborn and he always enjoyed going to Fairway. He died at almost 100 years of age and always spoke of old Columbia Street. My Dad passed in 1993 and he too, was happy to see us settled across the street from his old home turf. The shoe stores supported my Dad Santo, Mom Marie, brothers Frank and Robert, sisters Maryann and Linda and we all went to Cafiero’s once for a grand Italian Sunday dinner outdoors. Very rare for our family because my grandmother’s Sunday dinner was like paradise. My grandparents Antonio and Rosalia loved Cafiero’s which is now an artists loft and studio. I still envision Marilyn Monroe exiting on to President Street.

What a blessing this neighborhood was and still is. The ghosts of the past provide every gentle breeze and the holdouts are shrines. We are blessed to be living on Columbia Street. We are now the “old-timers” in this neighborhood immortalized by Arthur Miller in his masterpiece A View from the Bridge. Red Hook, South Brooklyn, Carroll Gardens truly prove, in memory, what Shakespeare wrote in Romeo and Juliette: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet!”