Italian American Food: Italian American Restaurant Foods and Pizza

Men and women working outside the home at first carried what they could approximate of the Italian fieldworker’s ration of chunks of hard bread, sausage, and cheese. Groceries, little more than peddlers or sutlers could carry in the nineteenth-century mining camps, arose to provide imported foods, and bakeries quickly followed. In large cities people working in or near their own neighborhoods could buy the components of an Italian fieldworker lunch each day. Inevitably they were made up into sandwiches. These sandwiches became known by a variety of regional names, in part because they were developed as convenience foods in the United States, although they are related to panini (pressed sandwiches) from Italy. The names may vary even within an American metropolitan area, as Italian sandwiches are known as “submarine sandwiches” or “subs” in most of Boston, but as “spuckies” (possibly from a pointed roll called a “spuccadella”) among older people and across the harbor in East Boston. On either side, an “Italian” has salami, mortadella, and capicolla with provolone and salad, all in a long bun. An “American” sub, or spuckie, substitutes American cheese and American salami, bologna, and ham—almost literal deracinated equivalents.