Restaurant archive
Your Deli
A little crazy. Completely ours. Right next door.
Your Deli sat next door to Villa Paolo. I opened it with Flavio and our wives. It became one of those places that was difficult to separate from the people who built it, because friendship, work, family and the neighbourhood all seemed to walk through the same door.
Next door to Villa Paolo
Two businesses.
One extended family.
Villa Paolo carried one rhythm. Your Deli had another. It was more casual, more immediate and, at times, wonderfully chaotic. But the same thing mattered in both places: people feeling that they belonged there.
Flavio and his family remain part of that story for me. This chapter is not being opened simply because the photographs turned up. It belongs here because we built something together, and those years still matter.
Villa Paolo, next doorThe room
A deli that never felt overly polished.
The counter, the shelves, the coffee machine, the open working space and the people coming and going gave it its personality. It looked lived in because it was lived in.
The neighbourhood
People came as they were.
It became so much part of the neighbourhood that formality disappeared. Locals could arrive in pyjamas, dogs settled under the tables and the deli felt less like somewhere people visited than somewhere they simply belonged.
At the door
The characters were the place.
Restaurants are often remembered through menus and interiors. I remember the faces, the habits, the conversations and the people who made the room feel alive.
Some places are remembered for what they sold. Your Deli is remembered for who was there.
This is only the beginning of the chapter. More photographs, more people and the stories behind them will be added as the archive comes back together.
Your Deli
A beautiful, crazy little chapter.
Next door to Villa Paolo, built with friends and family, and held together by a community that treated it as their own.