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Vito DiPaola was supposed to do something else with his life than run a deli, but it turns out you can take him out of the Bronx, but you can't take the Arthur Avenue out of him.
"My family wanted me to do something else, to get out of the family business. What can I say? It just pulls you back in," said DiPaola, owner of Panella's Arthur Avenue Deli and Catering, which recently opened at 78 Westchester Ave. in Scotts Corners.
His parents came from Avellino, not far from Naples, and set up shop on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx in the 1960s. "You know how you're supposed to do something different and better than what your parents did? That's what they wanted for me," DiPaola said.
He nearly did get out of the food business. DiPaola studied management at University of Bridgeport and then stumbled into working as a graphics editor at The Associated Press in New York for six years before starting a deli in Orange County with a cousin.
"We make our own bread, cheeses and ravioli there," he said. "Everything's made from scratch in small batches."
Meanwhile, a close family friend who lives in Bedford kept asking DiPaola when he was going to start a deli in this area.
"For years he asked me this," DiPaola said.
When the two saw each other at a family reunion last year, the friend asked again, and as usual DiPaola just took the suggestion as praise of his food. "Then, two days later, this location pops up on Craigslist," he said. "It was a sign. Karma. I had to do it."
He named his shop after his nickname for his daughter, Giuliana. "It means little bread, and it's slang for 'a good thing,' "he said. "When she was born, I said, "She's my panella."
Giuliana, who is 10 now, sometimes helps out in the shop, traveling up from the family's Bronxville home to work the cash register. "She works that register better than any adult," DiPaola.
If his parents were disappointed in DiPaola's choice of career, they've forgiven him for it. "My mom helps me all the time," he said. "She's where I get most of my ideas."
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