Altomonte's: An Eataly-like Italian emporium in Bucks

We always hear about the shiny, new food companies. The Spot is a series about the Philadelphia area's more established establishments and the people behind them.

Altomonte's, an Italian deli and gourmet shop that has been in business in Warminster since 1982, opened a second store this year in Doylestown, in a building that was recently a car dealership. Though it's not Eataly, Mario Batali's 50,000-square-foot marketplace in New York City, Altomonte's new store does have a few things in common with that famous spot.

It's equal parts restaurant and grocery, with new indoor and outdoor cafe seating and a staggering assortment of prepared Italian foods. It also specializes in gourmet imports - a tall jar of grape tomatoes preserved whole, gelato, pastas in all shapes and sizes. And, of course, there are also prosciutto, provolone, and olive oil. Then there are the house-made items: frozen ravioli of all stripes, sauces, bread, and Italian sausage. Finally, there's an on-site butcher shop with its own dry-aging room.

This homegrown Italianate emporium is powered by an ambitious immigrant couple: Michele "Mike" Grispino and his wife, Frances, whose Italian accent remains thicker than mascarpone cheese. With Mike and Frances in their 60s, the next generation, brother and sister Vincent Grispino and Maria Nappi, are taking the reins. When I sat down to talk with Maria Nappi and her mother, Frances Grispino, in their new store, their pride was big enough to fill the cavernous room.

Maria:

My parents came to the United States after they were married in 1969, from Altomonte in southern Italy. They came, and they opened a little store in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. Back then, it was called Meat Market. My dad is a butcher by trade. That was around 1972. In 1982, they moved the business up to Warminster. I was 2 at the time. They opened up a little store on County Line Road in Warminster and called it Altomonte's, after their hometown.

Maria:

No, not at that time. In 1997, we moved to Beech Street, also in Warminster, just around the corner. That's when we started baking our own bread. We also knocked down a wall and brought the butcher shop back because people were asking for it. It's hard to find a nice dry-aged piece of steak. Everyone is getting their meat already cryovac-ed and cut up. We get in hindquarters and a half a cow, and we have true butchers back there still practicing the trade. At the new store, we have a dry-aging room. It's beautiful. Yeah. Nothing eats like a dry-aged piece of meat.

Maria:

Not until I got away from it. After graduating from college, I went to work at an accounting firm. I would go Monday through Friday, and I would work in an office by myself with a computer, and there was no smells. I missed the smell of cheese, the peppers roasting, the pasta sauce bubbling over on the stove, the sweetness of the ricotta, the chocolate, everything. Just the melding of all of it together. After a full day of work at the accounting firm, I'd go right back to the store. It's a family business. That's what you do. At 5 o'clock, the store is still open. Saturday and Sunday, you're open. I never truly left. After we moved to a bigger location, the store needed me to help, and I wanted to be there.

Maria:

Yeah.

Maria:

They were thrilled. They were always calling me saying, "We need you. What are you doing? We need you here. Come right now." That was in 1999.

Frances:

Yes. We have the veal, and spring lamb, baby goats, all the specialty meats, including rabbit. We have dry-aged beef that nobody has. We have the fresh Italian sausage that we make here.

Maria:

The parking is what everyone has wanted. We added pizza, the hot bar is bigger, and we added coffee. We're able to do more of the things we've wanted to add for a while.

Altomonte's Italian Market & Delicatessen, 85 N. York Rd., Warminster, 215-672-5439, and 856 N. Easton Rd., Doylestown, 215-489-8889.

Joy Manning, a writer and editor who has covered food and restaurants in Philadelphia for more than decade, is also the executive editor of Edible Philly and Edible Jersey magazines. Also follow her on Instagram @joymanning.