Boston's North End is part of my hometown and heritage. This neighborhood - the signs, sounds, and scents - are thoroughly Italian. Groups of men gather with friends on Hanover Street, the North End's "Main Street," to exchange news and views in Italian. The mostly male crowd at the Caffe Dello Sport converse in Italian over dark espresso about upcoming soccer games and the Boston Celtics and Red Sox scores. At the Caffe Vittoria and Caffe Pompei, younger generations are bilingual, too. And there are markets, restaurants, and bakeries dealing in Italian specialties.
The North End is also America's neighborhood because it is where the Revolution began. It was home to Paul Revere; his house is still here in North Square, a favorite stop for tourists walking Boston's Freedom Trail, which winds through the North End. There's Old North Church, where the lanterns were hung that started Paul Revere on his midnight ride. The neighborhood sits on a hill crowned by Copps Hill Burial Ground, where some headstones bear seventeenth-century dates, overlooking Boston Harbor and Charlestown, where the masts of the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) still rise, and where the British set sail for Boston in their unsuccessful attempt to foil the earliest revolutionary activities.
I recall frequent shopping trips from the suburbs to the North End as a child with my mother, an activity common among other Italian-Americans who have moved out of this neighborhood with an Italian soul. We'd start our shopping on Cross Street, just a stone's throw from historic Faneuil Hall, Quincy Marketplace, and the open-air stalls and vending carts of Haymarket Square.
Mother used to say that the snails in the bin at Giuffre's Fish Market on the corner of Cross and Salem streets were the best baby-sitters; if she left her children there while she shopped inside, we'd still be there when she returned. These days, it's what is inside the market that interests me: whiting, mussels, periwinkles, eel, and calamari. Seafood is an Italian favorite; since most of Italy is bounded by coastline, Italians are natural fishermen, and they have delicious ways to cook fish.
Today, we're buying squid, fresh whiting for soup, and those stiff-as-a-board fillets of salted, dried fish called baccala that make a delicious antipasto. The snails at Giuffre's are still fascinating. Two little boys come in, each extending a nickel in their hands. "We want a nickel's worth of snails," they tell the proprietor. "You'll waste your money; they won't last," they're told. "We want 'em to play with!" The man at Giuffre's gives each boy two or three snails in a paper bag.
Down Cross Street, past the produce vendors' eggplants, peppers, and lemons, at the Purity Cheese Company, the fresh mozzarella and ricotta are so sweet and delicious you'll never be happy with supermarket varieties again. The pungent Parmesan and Romano sit in whole wheels on the counter, ready for chunks to be cut off and carried home for grating. Once, I had the nerve to ask for grated cheese at Purity. They wouldn't sell it to me! The proprietor said, "You don't want that; we sell it to restaurants!" He insisted that I buy it by the piece and grate it myself. Purity also makes mozzarella with fresh milk, formed into small cheeses the size of your fist and kept moist in a bin of water. And the ricotta for lasagna or manicotti is sold as it was in my grandmother's day, packed in old-fashioned tins and covered
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