Mussels are another local glory found on local menus. At Bobby Van’s, they are served “mariniere” (simply steamed in wine and herbs) year-round. But there are so many ways to serve these cheap, easily cooked shellfish: cold as a first course with various sauces or in soups or hot entrees.

The Neapolitan pie, hardly known in this country before the 1930s, must certainly have overtaken the hot dog as the nation’s number one favorite snack food. According to scholarly research conducted in the ’50s by the lat Richard Gehman, one Frank Mastro from Bari (not Naples) is credited with popularizing pizza outside the Italian neighborhoods in New York.