It’s 10 a.m. on a Wednesday morning and I’m on the line at Mike’s Deli – one of the best-known food stores and cafés in the Arthur Avenue Retail Market in Belmont, the area known as “the Little Italy of the Bronx” – deciding between an order of rice balls or eggplant rollatini to go with my dinner later that evening.

The deli’s founder, the much-loved Mike Greco, who was known as “the Lion of Belmont,” died in 2019. His father, Gennaro, had come to New York from Naples in 1915, and his son, David, who now runs the business, like his father before him, is practically royalty in these parts. He even sells a sandwich called the “King David” – sopressata with four-year-old Parmesan, since you’ve asked.