The neighborhood Italian deli is your best bet to find a quality cold cut sandwich, hearty meatball sub, or an Appalachian-influenced pepperoni roll. Also, it’s where you ought to go to purchase imported meats and cheeses like prosciutto di Parma and pecorino Romano. Principally, these delis are grocery stores, but on a deeper level they also serve as a community watering hole. Walk into any deli, and you’re sure to find other members of the Italian American community catching up with one another.

A good Italian deli feels like the holidays — it’s full of familial warmth, generosity, liveliness, and cheer. The best ones lean into the festiveness by playing the Italian-folk tunes of Louis Prima, Dean Martin, and Frank Sinatra through the speakers. Most of these delis are family outposts that have been mainstays for decades, with some starting nearly 100 ago — part of a centuries-long migration of people of Italian descent that have made their way to the Detroit region since the city’s founding in 1701.