While passion is a consistent factor found throughout the deli industry, it’s not often you come across a story where someone will cross states, snow, and national borders to see a block of cheese. Even one as impressive as a provolone weighing in at 1,000 pounds.
Anthony LoFrisco is a Connecticut resident who made such a trek just to see this chunk of cheese, and he told reporters who surprised him upon his arrival in Ottawa, Canada, that it wasn’t for a taste.
“The cheese was great, but I didn’t wait 70 years and drive seven hours to get a piece of cheese,” LoFrisco said, according to the Wilton Bulletin. “I did it to relive a memory.”
LoFrisco is a child of World War II, when Italian cheese was embargoed. “One day right after the war ended, we were playing stickball in the street when a kid came running up the block, screaming, ‘Hey! DePalo just got the biggest cheese in the world.’” LoFrisco recalled dropping the game immediately and rushing with the group to see the sensational dairy product.
“It was in a crate — 12 feet long, three feet square; they took it out and put it on a table — a 1,000-pound provolone.”
LoFrisco was a 12 year old Italian boy, living in Brooklyn under Allied sanctions that barred Italian imports during the war.
Now, seven decades later, he drove seven hours, 460 miles, to relive that moment at Nicastro’s Italian Food Emporium in Ottawa.
Owner Joe Nicastro and his family were happy to meet with LoFrisco after he had called to relay his story and the desire to see his Italian prize.
It is an experience LoFrisco - who is an avid cooker with a family cookbook in the works - had to add to his work.
“I told the publisher, ‘Stop the presses; I gotta put this story in,’” LoFrisco told the Wilton Bulletin.
Though the addition was three paragraphs that would set publishing back three weeks, LoFrisco said it was worth it. The book, The LoFrisco Family Cookbook, is now back in the works and on its way, with an addition that reminds readers what an impact withholding something as seemingly small as a slice of cheese can have.
