All it took to resolve my identity crisis was a dented appliance and dinner at a storefront Italian restaurant
By Aaron Belz
My wife and I suffered a ratty old Hotpoint refrigerator for almost two years and would have suffered it longer, had Natalie Slyman not enrolled in my creative-writing class at Saint Louis University last fall. After calling her name on the first day, I had to ask, “Slyman, as in ... Slyman Brothers Appliances? Those great TV commercials?” She smiled. “One of them is my grandfather.”
Natalie’s father, Bob, currently runs the Slyman Brothers store at 4900 Hampton, south of the Hill. When Natalie signed up for my literature course in the spring, I got up the nerve to ask her whether her dad could cut me a deal on a new fridge. She smiled and said she bet he could.
My family drove down to the Hampton showroom on a weeknight, near closing time. It became obvious to me that Bob would have made me a deal I couldn’t refuse even if his daughter hadn’t been in my class. Talk about a family-run operation—while my wife and I perused the selection of affordable stainless side-by-sides, our two tiny daughters hunkered down on the floor in the back of the store drawing crayon portraits of Darlene Slyman, who was sprawled in an amusing pose. We bought a G.E. with a miniscule dent for hundreds less than retail.
Across the street from Slyman Brothers, behind an unattractive storefront, was Giancarlo’s Restaurant. My wife and I eyed it skeptically but reasoned that we had tried Slyman Brothers and liked it, so we might also like Giancarlo’s. This close to the Hill, surely they’d have something good to eat. We braved a logistically improbable parking lot and walked into a practically empty restaurant. A cute boy with gelled hair, who looked and talked as though he’d just moved here from Brooklyn, laid out our menus at one end of a table that seats 12. Nearby stood an enormous television—enormous as in 6 feet wide, but, fortunately, not on. We were getting mixed signals about Giancarlo’s.
The menu, blurry photocopies in a plastic folder, looked promising pricewise, with $7 entrées and a $3 kids’ menu. My wife ordered the calzone, the girls got spaghetti, and my son and I decided to split a Giancarlo’s “special” 16-inch sandwich. Soon we noticed two older women in the kitchen, which is visible from the dining room, kneading dough.
“Are they seriously kneading the dough for my calzone?” asked my wife.
“We shall see,” I said, imitating Mike Shannon.
They were. When it arrived, my wife took a bite and I recognized the muffled syllables she uttered as “Oh ... my ... gosh.” My son and I concurred as we tucked into our sandwich halves, stacked high with prosciutto, salami, pepperoni, fresh tomato slices and jalapeños and seasoned with we didn’t even know what.
Before long, a man with numerous children underfoot came into the dining room, planted himself at a table with lots of food and reading materials, and turned on the enormous television. “I paid a lot of money for that TV not to have it on,” he announced, then proceeded to read a magazine as the children ate dinner. Bones played loudly, unwatched. Afraid that something disturbing might flash on the screen at any moment, I instructed my kids to stare at their plates and eat, which they delightedly did. This restaurant had all the signs of being the real deal—right down to the grease-penciled specials menu on a mirror by the front door.
I found out on a later visit that one of the women in the kitchen was the owner, Tina Campieri, who attended culinary school in Sicily and opened Giancarlo’s in the ’80s. The other was her mother, Francesca Taullo, who, at 88 years old, still works 16-hour days. “She insists on preparing the salad all the time. It is an art for her,” Tina told me in a thick Italian accent. “We make everything from scratch—red sauce, white sauce, all the dough for bread.” The man who had turned on the big-screen? Tina’s son Carlos Campieri, who works in building construction and is in the midst of redesigning and expanding Giancarlo’s.
If you decide to visit, ask Tina to show you the recently installed walk-in refrigerator, which takes up a large part of the southwest corner of the building. If it’s not during lunch or dinner, she might even show you the giant dough mixer—and, if you’re lucky, she’ll introduce you to her mother.
I often wonder, as a member of a numbingly brand-driven consumer society, how to maintain a degree of existential sensitivity—you know, authenticity. I suspect I’m not the only person who wonders this. There’s a reason so many moviegoers identified with The Truman Show when it came out nearly a decade ago. We Americans feel as though our lives are being controlled from a hidden boardroom where executives are targeting our various demographics and coming up with just the right formula.
It’s not as if the average American can avoid wearing Nikes and Levi’s and eating at chain restaurants. I know that I can’t, but I still wonder how to, as Thoreau put it, “live deliberately.” After spending a few years in hardscrabble urban St. Louis, I think I’m discovering an answer in places such as Slyman Brothers and Giancarlo’s. Having visited them, I’m able to enjoy even the most generic penne rustica without fear that I’m merely a representative of a target market. I know who I am—and what community I’m from.
