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Panini-maker and president

Marco Lentini's fare is not truly "health food," as Obama labeled it. But it is good food.

Two days after the event - which was Monday in the East Room of the White House - you could find Xeroxes of the news photos of Marco Lentini, 34, with President Obama taped to the windows of Lentini's Già Pronto panini-and-salad shops, one of which is on the ground floor of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange, the other (the more hopping of the two, given the state of the stock market) on 38th at Spruce, which fills up at lunchtime with Penn students who aren't in the mood for the Korean or Caribbean being dispensed from the gaggle of curbside trucks.

The event was Obama's announcement (as part of the stimulus plan) of moves to keep small-business loans flowing, in part by cutting fees, thus breathing life into more panini shops, software start-ups, and cabinentmakers' studios: That's where the lion's share of new jobs get created, he said.

The president: "First of all, Marco, thank you for that wonderful introduction. I don't know if people heard properly here, but this is an all-natural (pause), health food (longer pause) restaurant in (pause) Philly (!) (Laughter.)

So I asked him what was the equivalent at his shop for a cheesesteak. (Laughter.) And he described for me - what was it, a chicken . . .

Mr. Lentini: It's our Chicken Italiano. (Laughter.) It's a chicken cutlet, spinach Florentine, sharp provolone . . . on Italian ciabatta bread."

So I went out and got a Chicken Italiano at the Stock Exchange shop. It's a very decent sandwich - the chicken tender and moist, the spinach toothsome, the provolone sharp. Not quite the personality of, say, a cutlet at Shank's & Evelyn's on 10th Street near the Italian Market. Not redolent of the woodsy smoke that wafts from the Greek skewer cart across Market Street and up to Già Pronto's front door. But a good grilled sandwich, yours for $6.75.

Già Pronto (Already Ready), it turns out, is not exactly a "health food" shop. A better word might be, a "healthier" option in the fast-food lane. The chicken is real pieces of Bell & Evans free-range, no-hormones chicken (not the processed stuff that gave the McNugget such a bad name). The provolone is imported. (They also use fresh mozzarella made at Claudio's on Ninth Street.) The bread is Baker Street.

But it's the terrific baby arugula and lettuce chopped salads (made to order from a long list of beets, seeds, tuna, and organic hard-boiled egg) that are Già Pronto's claim to fame: The chopping blends the flavors, and "makes them easier to eat." (Last week, they seemed to be outselling the stodgy offerings at Saladworks, a chain outlet just down from the Spruce Street store.)

Lentini also is not quite your typical upstart food purveyor. He's a Wharton grad who spent four years on the Dark Side - on Wall Street and as a young investment banker in London.

He was not, however, to the manor born: His Italian-born parents (his father cried when he saw the photos of Lentini with the President) raised him at 13th and Tasker in South Philly, feeding him the risottos of Italy's north and the red sauce of the south. And at some point in his brief banking career it occurred to him that he was more excited about the eateries near his clients than about the clients themselves.

It had not escaped his notice, as well, that the growth of Trader Joe's and Whole Foods was off the charts: "All we did," he says, "is take that food philosophy and graft it to more of a Starbucks-style cafe operational model."

And, well, he then applied for - and got - a Small Business Administration-backed loan. It was his nomination by the Lititz-based Susquehanna Bank, which handled that loan, and a second one, that got him the White House notice.

The other half of Lentini's team is Anthony Marino, a high school chum of his from Runnemede, where the family had moved. Marino's dad owned the local pizza shop, and Marino went on to the Culinary Institute of America. He oversees the commissary in South Jersey that cooks the cutlets and sautes the spinach.

At least two new units are planned, one opening in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. A new $1 million loan, Lentini says, could help him double his workforce of 45.

Entry-level jobs pay a little over $8 an hour, plus tips. But his older managers make more, and presumably they will buy more cars and houses, making the economy - like Già Pronto's menu of fast food - a little bit healthier.

Già Pronto

20th and Market

215-568-1994

3736 Spruce St.

215-222-7713EndText

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