Rulli Brothers

You all know I grew up in the South from my earlier post. My husband grew up on the opposite side of the food world! Dom and our youngest flew out to Dom's hometown of Youngstown, Ohio this morning for a birthday party. I was remembering that my first trip to Youngstown was a cultural experience. At first, nothing seemed dramatically different from Atlanta. After visiting with relatives, Dom and took me on a tour of Youngstown. We drove by the Sparkle Market where he used to work, then took a scenic tour of Mill Creek Park. We sat on the hood on Dom’s car while we ate chocolate pecan ice cream from Handel’s. Then we headed to Rulli Brother’s Italian Market to pick up a few things to take back to Atlanta.

As I stepped through the doors, I realized this was no ordinary store. Meats and cheeses hung from the ceiling. The deli case was loaded with capicolla, mortadella and soppressatta. Shelves were stocked with cans and jars of exotic sounding delicacies like giardiniera, caponata, and cipollini onions alongside a huge selection of olives. The bakery section had all sorts of fascinating goodies like foccacia, panettone and pandoro, mustaccioli, and biscotti. They had the boxes of torrone candy that Dom received each year at Christmas from a friend's Mom. Then there was the produce area with escarole, endive and cardoons. This was a veritable wonderland of food! They even had the equipment to make pasta, pizzelles, and cannollis at home, and the espresso pots did not have an electrical cord. My head was spinning!

Dom ordered mortadella, capicolla, prosciutto, as well as a ball of the butter provolone hanging from the ceiling. We bought one of the stove-top espresso pots and a few biscotti to nibble on the drive back to Dom’s Aunt’s house. I reluctantly left the store, frequently glancing back to permanently imprint the vision on my brain. Even years later, there is nothing in Atlanta that compares to that Italian paradise known as Rulli Brothers!