I recently discovered two things I didn’t know about Pete & Sam’s Italian restaurant.
The stuffed celery I’ve seen on the menu for decades is absolutely delicious.
And they have a great T-shirt bearing a picture of the late Sam Bomarito as “The Godfather” from the 1972 movie of the same name.
First, the stuffed celery. Someone in the group I was with recently ordered it. It comes with black olives, peppers, and lots of lettuce with paprika sprinkled around. You get four celery sticks.
I was blown away. I took a photo and posted it on Facebook. As of this writing, that post has 222 “likes,” 69 comments, and four shares. And you know how we all like “likes.”
I called Sammy Bomarito, one of the restaurant owners, to ask him about the history of their stuffed celery and the T-shirts with the picture of his father, one of the founders of the restaurant.
The gorgonzola cheese-based celery sticks filling includes mayonnaise, garlic, and green onions, Sammy says. “We’ve always had it on the menu,” he says. “It’s been on the menu for as long as I can remember.”
He’s not sure who put it on the menu, but he thinks it was “one of Miss Vita’s dishes.” That’s the late Vita Gattuso, Sam’s sister. “Something she came up with.”
It seems like I’ve seen the stuffed celery sticks on the menu forever, but I never ordered them. “It’s always been popular,” Sammy says. “It’s kind of one of those hidden things. If you’re zipping over the appetizers your eye might go to the toasted raviolis or something else. But it’s always been there.”
When I went to Pete & Sam’s the other night so server Gabe Roberts could take a photo of me for the story, I asked server Nick Musarra about the stuffed celery. He says, “I sold six or seven of them last night.”
As for those T-shirts, they’ve been around for four years, Sammy says. His brother, Michael Bomarito, also an owner of the restaurant, designed it. “It was based on The Godfather and he substituted Sam’s picture for it.”
The T-shirts have been “very popular,” Sammy says. “We’ve had probably four or five T-shirt runs on those, for sure.”
And, he says, they’ve probably sold 1,000 of the T-shirts over the years.
So, slip on a T-shirt and kick back with a tray of stuffed celery sticks and maybe a basket-wrapped bottle of chianti and imagine Nino Rota’s theme from The Godfather playing in the background.
But it might have to contend with one of Pete & Sam’s Frank Sinatra recordings.
Pete & Sam’s is at 3886 Park Avenue; (901) 458-0694