From our files: DiNic's is on a roll

Originally published in Inquirer Magazine on Sunday, Feb. 19, 1995 

"DID I WANT TO MAKE SANDWICHES all my life? " Thomas Nicolosi laughs at the question. "No, I didn't. I never thought about what I wanted to do all my life. I just lived my life, and it turned out happy. But who knows? Maybe I will give my life a thought some day, and do something completely different. "

"I gave it a thought," says Thomas' daughter Marcella. "I'm just happy working with my father."

Thomas and Marcella Nicolosi, and on busy days Marcella's uncle Gus Pollizze, run DiNic's sandwiches in the Reading Terminal Market. For $3.75 you have your choice of delicious fresh-cooked roast pork, roast beef, or, Marcella's favorite, chicken marsala - "I have one every day for lunch! " Fifty cents more gets you a slippery pile of homemade spicy-hot garlicky roast peppers or silver-dollar-size chips of unsliceable provolone cheese.

"We do not use slicing provolone!" says Thomas. "Slicing provolone" - a gesture of disgust - "is just lunchmeat. It tastes like turkey breast! This is real aged provolone cheese we use, like we use real peppers, real garlic, real meat. The pork is fresh ham; the beef, bottom round. I roast everything here myself, fresh every morning, from scratch, out in the open where anybody can see. We give you fast service - not fast food. I never open a can of anything. No canned stock, no powdered stock, chemicals, no preservatives, no junk. I buy my bread from Coppola's bakery, Eighth and Watkins, where my grandfather and father bought them. It's a typical little Italian bakery. The rolls are shaped by hand, not punched out of machines like the big bakeries. They have a crust, they have a bite to them. Old-style, like my sandwiches. "

One sandwich seems new-style to me. Vegetarians who envy carnivores the gutsy delights of cheesesteaks will be delighted to learn that DiNic's sells a luscious, drippy, spicy-hot sandwich crammed with nothing but garlicky spicy- hot roasted peppers and provolone - the only vegetarian dish I know with the true heft and authority of Philly street food. And it costs only "three dollars - around. I can't tell you exactly," says Thomas. "It depends on the price of peppers. We sell a lot of pepper and provolone during Lent. The pepper dealers realize people are eating more of their stuff, and they shoot up the prices. Maybe $6 a case right before Easter. I have to charge a little more, too. "

DiNic's started long ago, when Thomas' grandfather Gaetano Nicolosi owned a butchershop at Seventh and Reed. "He had five sons and four daughters all living at home, and a very large oven. When people bought a big roast, they'd ask my grandfather to cook it. Finally, they started selling sandwiches out of the garage. My cousin Frankie DiClaudio and I took over the cooking, and then opened our own place, which we called DiNic's - obviously, for our two names. Finally, Frankie and I, still friends, split up. He opened DiNic's Tavern, at 15th and Snyder. I came here.

"We're still making the same sandwich, with the same secret mix of spices. Which is no secret at all. Garlic, basil, oregano, black pepper, and a pinch - just a pinch - of salt. I chop my own garlic fresh every day, of course. I love garlic too much to buy garlic beads. But I am not a garlic snob. I do rub the outside of the roast with a little garlic powder. "

"Did you make him taste a chicken marsala?" says Marcella. "Boy, is it good! " The chicken marsala is tender chicken breast lightly braised with marsala wine. Both Thomas and I agree that it's a great sandwich.

"But, you know, I don't really eat meat," he says. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not a vegetarian. It's just that when I get home from work, what I want is beans and macaronis."

"And garlic," says Marcella.

"Garlic, of course," says Thomas. "I eat garlic with every meal. Except my morning oatmeal. "