Santarpio's

Santarpio's is a restaurant in the Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of East Boston. A landmark to locals and a destination for out-of-towners, the eatery is primarily known for its East Coast/American-style pizza, which it has served in the same location since 1933. Established in 1903 as a bakery, Frank Santarpio began selling pizza three decades later. One Boston Globe reporter said of the establishment that "[t]he average New Englander's only knowledge of East Boston is the sign for Santarpio's Pizza that can be seen from the highway on the way to the airport."

Founded and still owned and operated by the Santarpio family, the restaurant was one of the original pizzerias that opened to cater to Italian-Americans who had emigrated to cities in the northeastern United States. Besides several varieties of pizza, Santarpio's menu offers only two other items: Barbecued lamb and sausage.

For a long time, part of the restaurant's charm was that the atmosphere was unadorned, except by boxing posters, and the waiters were not overly helpful. Today that has moderated to some degree, and even the baby-food jars that once held crushed red pepper have been replaced by more conventional containers.

The restaurant's staff are also memorable for their manner and their longevity. Jeff Kalligheri, an East Boston native who heads Dolce Vita Productions, remarked, "Santarpio's staff, they're the real actors of East Boston," after the eatery refused to fill an order from the Bachelor No. 2 production when the crew insisted that the 75-pie order be ready in an hour. Glenn Carlton has baked bread and prepared dough for the pizzas at Santarpio's for thirty years. Lennie Timpone, whose mother was a Santarpio, was born in 1945 and has worked at the Chelsea Street location all his life.

External links

• Official Site