PRESSED

e first met Steve

WMartorano in the parking lot outside Pastificio’s in Packer Park.

It was April 2013 and Steve just published a new cookbook Yo Cuz! My Life. My Food. My Way and we wanted to tell our RowHome readers all about it. My mother couldn’t wait to meet him. She loved bragging about people from the neighborhood who hustled. People like Steve who loved cooking so much, he moved to Florida, opened a successful restaurant, and wrote a cookbook to share the recipes he learned while watching his mom and grandmom in the kitchen.

‘I can’t wait to make the crabs and macaroni,’ my mother says on our drive there. ‘And the linguini and clams. He’s right, you know. It’s gravy. Not sauce. Because we start it with a piece of beef or pork. Then add meatballs. Sauce is marinara. Ma...rinaaaa… raaaa,’ my mother emphasizes from her back seat in my car.

Dawn shifts around in the front passenger seat. She’s trying to hook the seatbelt so the annoying beeping stops. She’s not one for patience and our mother is going on and on about the gravy. ‘Mom. Please! Try not to bend his ear when we get there,’ she says. ‘We all know it’s gravy. Dorette wrote about it 30 years ago. It ain’t sauce. Real South Philadelphians call it gravy. Steve has a copy of that story in his Florida restaurant.’

‘He’s a good kid,’ my mom says proudly. “Do you know him?” I ask. ‘Not really,’ she answers. ‘But I remember him.’

Dawn comes to life listening to my mom.

‘We ordered his sandwiches when we worked at the switchboard,’ she flashes back to the 1980s. ‘Remember the chicken cutlet sandwiches! The best I ever ate. Long hots. Broccoli rabe. We couldn’t wait to order! Nothing better than seeing a young man from the neighborhood go from delivering sandwiches to opening his own restaurant!’ My mother keeps going. ‘God bless him! I wish him a million more!’

The word switchboard got me thinking as I minded my business behind the steering wheel. No

wonder they’re both on the phone day and night! They can’t help themselves! They are professional talkers! They answered hundreds of calls apiece back in the day when they worked together for Rose Salvatore Answering Service. Dawn always says she learned from the best when she took that part-time job in high school. I wish I was a fly on that wall watching the two of them poke holes in the board as the calls lit up in rapid succession. They answered for more than 500 clients across the city – including doctors, lawyers, funeral parlors, and most of the businesses in South Philly and beyond. They knew everyone and everyone knew Carol. My mom got her start at Bell Telephone when she was 16. Then she spread her savvy switchboard skills around to other places like Pennsylvania Hospital, Kansas Beef Industries. Rose Salvatore. She finally hung up her receiver after 20 years with renowned attorney Chuck Peruto Sr. & Associates in 2008, the year we snatched her up for RowHome. “Tell the truth, mom. Working with your daughters is the best job you ever had,” I laugh. I look in my rearview just in time to catch her rolling her eyes to the back of her head. ‘Yeah! Come to work with us, they said! We’ll have so much fun!’ my mom mumbles loud enough to be heard. Dawn snorts while she mentally prepares her comeback. My mother keeps at it. ‘Every day I ask myself, when is the fun going to start?’ She acts as if we’re not in the same car with her. As we pull into the parking lot, we see Steve Martorano and now wife Marsha chatting with Pastificio owners Anthony Messina and Frank Sanguiliano. My mother sees him, too. She can’t wait to meet him. ‘Make sure you take a picture of me with him,’ she reminds us. ‘I am so proud of him.’ We are all proud of you, Steve Martorano. Thank you for keeping the taste of authentic family recipes around for generations to come. In the words of our mom Carol, ‘God bless.’ We wish you ‘a million more.’ One last thing. Before he left that day, we asked Steven “Marvelous” Martorano to autograph our copy of his book. PRHby DORETTE ROTA PRHPRESSEDPRESSED By Dorette Rota Jackson It’s Gravy, not Sauce! JACKSON To Dorette & Dawn Yo Cuz. Never give up