Damiano’s Delicatessen
You’d be forgiven for overlooking Damiano’s, given the non-descript exterior that could just as easily be another home in the neighborhood. But, a few faint trappings within the window reveal that it just might be a deli, after all.
Once you get inside, you’d again be forgiven if you’re not sure you’re in the right place - is this place even still in business? It seems practically abandoned, as if time were slipping away and no one had touched it in years.
Ah, but that’s the trick. Don sits behind the counter, same as ever, ready to take your order. Why waste time renovating the store if it just means he’s doing to have to charge you more for a sandwich? Wouldn’t you rather the sandwich just stay $5 even in 2025? You bet your ass.
So, even though I had this inkling to turn around and leave, thinking “there’s no way this can actually be good… but all the reviews are off the charts. I guess I gotta try it.”
And I’m so, so glad that I did. The images you’re seeing are actually from my second trip, once I decided to return to try out a breakfast sandwich that reviewers also talked up: Pork Roll, Egg and Cheese (Salt, Pepper, Ketchup, of course) on a Kaiser Roll.
As I came in with a camera strapped over my shoulder, a man chatting and laughing at the counter, a regular, I’m sure, asked me “Are you here to interview Don?”
“I’m here to interview him about a sandwich.” I’ll admit I was pretty pleased with myself for that one.
Don set about cooking up the pork roll (a New Jersey specialty, alternatively called “Taylor Ham”. This is, I am told, very contentious.) and I took the time to make some imagine of the light filtering into the shop. I wanted to do it more kindness than my first go around, where I was blown away and marveling at the decay.
There’s still a shelf full of dust-encrusted Diet Pepsi & Diet Mountain Dew bottles, but I decided to skip it in order to show the shop in a more favorable light. But now that I’ve become endeared to it, I kind of hope they just stay there and keep collecting dust for decades to come. It would be only fitting.
