On a beautiful Saturday morning in June, a long-delayed street renaming ceremony took place at 379 Columbia Street to honor the late Dan Defonte, the former proprietor of Defonte’s Sandwich Shop. The large Defonte clan and their friends and fans gathered from near and far to celebrate, donning tee shirts honoring the new Daniel Defonte Way.
The usual speeches were heard and the old days were recalled. One of the old-timers who Dan broke in never forgot his friendly advice: “There are no short cuts, kid, just do it the right way.” Nick got choked up remembering his dad, as did a good part of the large crowd. Then came the after-ceremony meal: tables full of Defonte sandwiches. I grabbed the legendary “Potato & Egg” which sustained me while I filed this dispatch.
My son James was working reconstruction jobs in the wake of Sandy when he chanced upon Defonte’s for the first time, heading down Columbia to the BQE entrance two blocks away. It looked crowded. Curious, he stopped. And he’s returned whenever work takes him anywhere near the BQE. His favorite: steak pizzaiola.
“After a back-breaking morning, the first time I bit into it, I almost cried with gratitude.” His friend Henry Finkel works for the City’s Environmental Protection agency, plugging water leaks. Defonte is his work crew’s go-to early morning or lunch destination. His favorite: the Italian Stallion. “The combo of the eggplant, prosciutto, mozzarella, and those roasted peppers…” His voice trailed off, and I could tell another trip from Flatbush to Red Hook was in the offing.
These tales of satisfaction by hard working Brooklynites who’ve discovered Defonte can be traced back a hundred years, so let’s start at the beginning.
In the early 1880s a four story brick building was erected at the confluence of Dwight, Liquer & Columbia Streets, with a storefront on the ground floor and three floors of apartments above. It would remain the only structure on the block facing Columbia for forty years. In the beginning, the Irish called 379 Columbia Street home, and the McGuinn family ran a saloon on the ground floor until the First World War approached. Thereafter the Italian immigration wave took over and the bar became a grocery.
In 1922 Nicola Defonte set up shop there, a proud son of Mola di Bari on the Adriatic coast. Mola was a town that was famous for focaccia, so much so that entrepreneurs created two enormous ovens for town folk to cook their bread in foot and a half long pans and take it home.
Defonte knew how to bake bread but his real skill was filling the space between the slices with some home cooked gustoso mangiare. By 1940 the storefront had become known as “The House of Sandwiches.”
The growing Defonte family lived in an apartment in the building behind the store at 12 Liquer Street and eventually the sons Nick, Phil, Dan and Vito would help out in what had become the go-to lunch spot for the dock and factory workers of thriving Red Hook.
Dan enlisted in the US Army after Pearl Harbor and when he came home, he and Vito took over from their dad, running “Defonte’s Sandwich Shop” for the next half century.
In the early morning of April 13, 1954, Dan, Vito and three customers were robbed at gunpoint. The hoods took $3,000 cash and fled in Dan’s car. Why so much cash on hand? It was a Friday, which most Americans used to call “the day the eagle screams” – Payday. There were no banks in Red Hook then. Defonte served as the de facto check cashing joint for the neighborhood.
But as shipping found other docks across the harbor, the industrial infrastructure that supported the waterfront dried up. Longshoremen hooks were retired and the neighborhood became one of the poorest in the City.
But Defonte stayed. It survived because their cooking, once tasted, brought people back. Truck drivers, construction workers, cops, utility laborers, anyone whose work brought them to South Brooklyn, Gowanus, and surrounding environs would plan on grabbing a hero at Defonte.
During the toughest days in Red Hook, the 1980’s, when crime was rampant, Defonte’s was the safe place—nobody bothered them.
Dan retired with Vito in 1998, handing the reins to his son Nick, and passed away in 2015.
Meanwhile the Defonte way was exported to Gramercy Park, only to be doomed by the 2009 financial collapse. Still, it exposed Manhattan foodies to their fares and a Zagat listing ensued. More recently, a Staten Island outpost has appeared in Stapleton Heights, appropriately on Water Street. It’s called “Defonte’s of Brooklyn.” Naturally.
Nicola, Dan, Vito, Nick…you done good. And thanks for never leaving.
