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Tom Arnold's old places: Filippi's Pizza Grotto
First in a series about longstanding businesses around town
The idea of writing about old places in San Diego County has been something I’ve been mulling around for years – but I kept putting it off because coming up with the parameters was a lot harder than I imagined. In the end, I decided to focus on businesses and restaurants that have been in the same place, with the same name and line of business, for at least 50 years.
Walk in through an Italian market past a long meat and cheese counter and into this classic old Italian restaurant, complete with red-and-white checkerboard tablecloths and empty Chianti bottles suspended from the ceiling. I remember coming here in the early 1960s with my parents, and except for an expansion of the original restaurant, the place is still the same as I remember it as a child. The market came first, in 1947, under the name Cash & Carry Italian Foods, followed three years later by the opening of the restaurant, initially with just eight tables. The proprietors were immigrants Vincent DePhilippis and Madeleine Manfredi, who had met in New York City and migrated out West after the second World War. They settled, quite naturally, in Little Italy, which at the time was a thriving Italian community — not yet bisected by Interstate 5 — of about 6000 families, many with roots in Genoa or Sicily. The men worked mostly in the tuna-fishing industry based off the nearby Embarcadero; the women stayed home, cooking, baking and raising their families. The kids played bocce ball in the street and, with their families, attended church on Sundays at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church, which had been established in 1925.
Editor's note: Another member of the DePhilippis family, Roberto, went on to found The Butcher Shop steakhouse, another restaurant that has stood the test of time — though, famously and violently, not always in the same location.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Tom Arnold's old places: Filippi's Pizza Grotto
First in a series about longstanding businesses around town
Tom Arnold's old places: Filippi's Pizza Grotto
First in a series about longstanding businesses around town
The idea of writing about old places in San Diego County has been something I’ve been mulling around for years – but I kept putting it off because coming up with the parameters was a lot harder than I imagined. In the end, I decided to focus on businesses and restaurants that have been in the same place, with the same name and line of business, for at least 50 years.
Walk in through an Italian market past a long meat and cheese counter and into this classic old Italian restaurant, complete with red-and-white checkerboard tablecloths and empty Chianti bottles suspended from the ceiling. I remember coming here in the early 1960s with my parents, and except for an expansion of the original restaurant, the place is still the same as I remember it as a child. The market came first, in 1947, under the name Cash & Carry Italian Foods, followed three years later by the opening of the restaurant, initially with just eight tables. The proprietors were immigrants Vincent DePhilippis and Madeleine Manfredi, who had met in New York City and migrated out West after the second World War. They settled, quite naturally, in Little Italy, which at the time was a thriving Italian community — not yet bisected by Interstate 5 — of about 6000 families, many with roots in Genoa or Sicily. The men worked mostly in the tuna-fishing industry based off the nearby Embarcadero; the women stayed home, cooking, baking and raising their families. The kids played bocce ball in the street and, with their families, attended church on Sundays at Our Lady of the Rosary Catholic Church, which had been established in 1925.
Editor's note: Another member of the DePhilippis family, Roberto, went on to found The Butcher Shop steakhouse, another restaurant that has stood the test of time — though, famously and violently, not always in the same location.
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