Andrew Balducci, owner of the famous Balducci’s food store in Greenwich Village, died on March 22, 2018 at St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, Long Island. He was 92 years old and passed surrounded by his family.
Quote from TJ Murphy, CEO Baldor Specialty Foods:
“My grandfather was an icon in the food world and an amazing businessman in general. I looked up to and learned from him the same way I did my father, Kevin Murphy, who often cited Andy as the person who taught him everything he knew about food; Andy helped shape the way he ran and built Baldor. They both believed that the love of good food was shared by many and that food brought people together. They were tremendous risk takers who had the courage to make their big move when the timing was right. Without Andy Balducci, there would be no Baldor. My biggest challenge has been to not only live up to their legacy, but to continue to take risks as they did to keep our businesses growing and relevant in today’s food-centric culture. He was an amazing person who thrived off interaction, and I will forever implement his thoughts and views as I run and grow the company.”
Quotes from Julia della Croce, food journalist who interviewed Andrew Balducci for more than 2 hours for an article she wrote.
“He was a pioneer. He introduced vegetables and other ingredients to the U. S. for the first time, things we now take for granted. One such is cime di rapa–"broccoli rabe" in U. S. parlance. It is a bitter green of the Italian south, beloved especially in his native Puglia, one of the poorest regions. He went back to Corato, where he was born, and paid a farmer he knew to grow it for him and ship it to Balducci's in N.Y. You can imagine what a big deal that was for that poor farmer who prior to then could only dream about some day selling his broccoli rabe to the big city, Bari, 50 miles away. Back in NYC, Andy's mother cooked it in the shop for takeout and it flew out of the deli counter. When a California grower who supplied Andy with broccoli visited the shop one day and saw people lining up for the broccoli rabe at the cooked foods counter, he asked, "What is this shit?" Andy told him he should grow it for him in California. The grower did and it eventually became wildly popular here, initially because all the Italian-Americans who knew the bitter green (beloved not only for its unique bitter flavor but also because it was symbolic of their suffering in the old country) recognized it and popularized it throughout the U. S. Andy couldn't live without it. He and Nina brought crates of it to their second home in the Bahamas when they retired and eventually convinced their local grocer there to import it to the Caribbean from the States.
Andy had old world grit and street smarts, but also, charm and a certain sophistication that enabled him to hobnob with James Beard and all the celebrities of his day who patronized his shop because they found things there that no one else carried. Of course, Nina was always at his side, working hard alongside him and his parents. His father taught Andy the trade, and his mother taught Nina how to cook. They worked side by side in the kitchen until they became successful enough to hire chefs to cook for them (trained by Nina, of course). He was a visionary and she was the vital partner in that extraordinary team. Andy and Nina really taught New York how to eat and cook genuine Italian food at a time when it was perceived as little more than pizza and pasta covered with red sauce and gooey cheese. Theirs was a place where for the first time, New Yorkers found authentic Italian cooking and could buy the ingredients they would need to make it at home. “
Anecdotes from his niece, Emily Balducci: (who also works at Baldor in the company’s marketing department) from an article she wrote for Baldor entitled “Christmas Eve at Balducci’s, circa 1985”
Andy would make a beeline for the produce department garbage cans when he walked in Christmas Eve morning. Despite the crowds and the chaos (or maybe because of them) he felt compelled to investigate any possible produce waste. Though he ran a very tight ship, he knew he had to be physically present on this busiest day of the year.
…Fire codes determined how many people were allowed in at once. Store managers stood inside the entrance letting 20 or so through at a time. How to keep those standing outside happy? Andy had the office crew passing panettone slices all day long to waiting customers. This little treat went far to assuage any agitation and spread Christmas cheer, Italian-style.
…Andy was adamant that all the traditional foods he remembered from his childhood in Italy be displayed for La Vigilia di Natale (the seven fishes Christmas Eve dinner). Our prepared food counter (Tavola Calda) featured Baccala Barese-style (dried cod with tomatoes) and Tomacchio (boiled eel marinated in vinegar with red onions and pickling spices). Mamma Balducci also grilled chunks of eel and threaded them on skewers with bay leaves. They didn’t sell much at all but Andy didn’t care – he felt true to his roots.
From an article for Baldor entitled “Food and Culture”
…When you heard Andy Balducci reminisce about his childhood in Italy you could practically smell the sauce simmering and taste the tang of the bitter greens he spoke about with great enthusiasm.
Not too long ago I overheard him proselytizing the merits of the cooking arts to my teenage daughter – a young lady who could care less about cooking. He had just turned 91 at the time. That a son could become a great home cook was not even on his radar. It was the women who manned the home stove in his world, who shopped the ingredients and cleaned up afterwards. Everyone did their share to make family life work but women had the honor of feeding the clan.
Andy’s words were beautiful that day – he impassioned her to not only learn to cook well, but to learn to love it. He said, “the kitchen is the thread to life itself”, drawing his fingers into a bunch to emphasis the very “core” of life. He was practically begging her – the next generation – to care about home cooking.
Andy was born in Greenpoint, Bklyn and at 2-months old, in 1925, moved to Corato, Italy. He emigrated to the United States in 1939 at the age of 14 with his parents, Louis and Maria, and his sister Grace. When WWII started, Andy enlisted in the US Navy at age 18. His naval duties involved participating in the invasion of Normandy where he suffered injuries that earned him a Purple Heart, but also put him in the naval hospital for 6 months.
His release from the hospital coincided with his father’s 1946 purchase of a storefront in Greenwich Village and together they opened a fresh produce business. The landmark gourmet store on Sixth Ave & Ninth St. had its humble beginning on Greenwich Avenue as an open-air fruit and vegetable market. The family worked rotating shifts around the clock to keep it open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Andy married Nina D’Amelio in 1952 and they had four daughters. He left the family produce business in 1960 to work in his father-in-law’s masonry on Cutter Mill Rd. in Great Neck, N.Y. During his eight-year tenure there, he secured major contracts throughout the city and Long Island, including laying the marble for several exhibition buildings at the 1964 World’s Fair. Andy returned to work with his father at Balducci’s in 1968.
A quadrupling of their rent around that time prompted Andy to move Balducci’s diagonally across Sixth Avenue. Andy’s vision was to launch a European-style food emporium in the new expanded space that featured “the best of the best” across every food category. Balducci’s already had a reputation for purveying the finest produce in the city. Andy built on that by spear-heading the import of many Italian specialties as well as exotic items such as Iranian caviar, French foie gras, and Spanish Serrano ham for the first time. These international delicacies were not widely available in the U.S. during the late 70’s and early 80’s and their new accessibility put Balducci’s on the culinary map.
Balducci’s became the shopping destination for food cognoscenti and celebrities alike. Mom and Pop Balducci, beloved by Village residents, worked there into their mid-eighties. Many Balducci grandchildren built their careers there as well. Balducci’s was featured on a Perry Como Christmas special in December, 1983 and it aired across the nation. By then, the Balducci catalog, created by Nina, brought high-end foods, and the Balducci name, into households across America.
The business was sold in 1998 and Andy and Nina spent their retirement between their home in East Williston on Long Island, and on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Andy is survived by his wife, Nina, two daughters, Marta and Andrea, 6 grandchildren and 4 great grandchildren.
Source: Family, Friends & Associates of Andrew Balducci