Through a dreary door and up a flight of stairs in an old brick apartment building is Philip Marino’s Arthur Avenue office. It’s situated dead center in the Little Italy of the Bronx on a block that boasts culinary institutions like Full Moon Pizza, open since 1976, and Teitel Brothers Grocery, open since 1915. 

If you weren’t looking for Marino, the honking New York City horns and smells of cured meats and fresh fish, and the busy sidewalks of the bustling Bronx district would make his office easy to miss. “This place is unique. You have a couple block area and you’ll have three butcher shops and two bakeries right next to each other. There are about eight businesses that have been here for more than 100 years,” Marino said, on a recent Friday, to me and my photographer, Humberto J. Rocha. We had come to explore the Belmont section of the Bronx’s Little Italy and, mainly, to eat.