A truly great meal is more than just food, it’s a story unto itself. Every dish is an opportunity for a chef to share a little piece of their journey and history with diners through carefully selected ingredients and painstaking preparation. Memphis foodies are getting a particularly epic tale-alongside delicious bites- when Daniel Pesce opens Pesce’s Italian Deli in the area later this fall.
Pesce’s will be opening in a 1,264 square foot storefront located in the Forum 1 building at 6750 Poplar Avenue at the corner of Poplar and Kirby Parkway. Daniel Pesce explains to What Now Memphis that the deli’s roots trace all the way back to Italy and a sausage recipe his father brought with him to America. “ I learned how to make it at about the age of 12 and kinda fell in love with it.” he says. “It’s unlike any Italian sausage in the U.S. and people came from all around to get it. I knew I always wanted to start a business with it, and I did just that in 2013, Pesce’s Authentic Italian Sausage.”
Pesce’s Authentic Italian Sausage was a hit and had an incredibly auspicious run. Pesce explains: “After I received my USDA approval, I found a company in Arkansas that was able to mass produce it for me. A bunch of places sold and used it in their recipes. Lucchesi’s, Superlo, Billy Hardwick’s, High Point Pizza, and several others. Lucchesi’s Italian sausage pizzas tripled in a month, their Italian sausage sandwich quickly became a best seller, and their Italian sausage lasagna quintupled its sales in just a month!”
Pork shortages owing to the pandemic shut down Pesce’s Authentic Italian Sausage, but Pesce is ready to share his family’s recipe with hungry diners again. Pesce states that finding the perfect location was a challenge, but destiny intervened.
“I had been looking for a small place to at least get the sausage going again, but everything was too big and expensive. Nothing made sense. I had almost given up the search, so I just said to myself ‘If this is meant to be, it will happen.’ The next day a customer came into the store I was running and we talked for about 20 minutes and she mentioned she worked in the Forum building across the street. I immediately thought about the deli and said ‘ya’ll don’t need a deli by any chance do you’ and she was taken aback and told me there was a deli already there and the tenants left a couple weeks prior. I still didn’t think too much about it. But when I left the store I thought I’d just go by and see what it looked like. I went by and I was shocked! It was perfect!”
Community is essential to Pesce’s vision for his latest endeavor. He plans to be very actively involved and to ensure visitors have ample options. He explains: “I want them to be able to get every meal from me. I will be open from 7:30am until 6pm with breakfast, lunch, and all of my items available to take home and eat an authentic Italian meal with their families. I will be teaming up with Sunrise of Memphis for breakfast and Lucchesi’s for take home meals for a bigger selection than that of my family recipes. There will be PLENTY to choose from!”
Pesce generously offered a deep dive into the menu (and creatively titled dishes) he has in store for Memphis foodies. “I’ll have Sunrise Memphis biscuit sandwiches, hash brown patties, cereal, oatmeal, things like that and Community coffee. For lunch I will have soups, salads and have specialty sandwiches like Pesce’s Authentic Italian Sausage with peppers and onions, Mimi’s meatballs, Mi Paisan, the bambino, what’s your beef, “you Turkey to me”, sleeps with the fishes, and ‘the chicken came first!’ You can also build your own sandwich with a third of a pound of meat and anything you want on it. It will be topped with Italian salad, an oil and vinegar blend mixed with shredded lettuce and also “flavor dust”, which is a secret. Also available will be side portions and appetizer style dishes like toasted ravioli, Italian spinach, Italian sausage risotto, gnocchi, rigatoni, lasagna, polenta, sausage cheese plate with ‘Nick’s sauce’ and many others. For take home I will have all of the lunch items but in bigger portions for the family to eat for dinner.”
Pesce’s will be able to offer limited seating for customers hoping to enjoy their meals right away. Pesce states that there will be six four top tables available, allowing seating for up to 24.
Locals won’t have to wait much longer to see how the sausage gets made (and then devour it); Pesce says “I have my certificate of Occupancy, so I’m looking at opening in 2-3 weeks as soon as I get my credit card processing, website and other equipment I’m waiting on. All is in the works so I’m gonna get cooking in the next week and then it is open to ALL!”
Under Pesce’s guidance, Pesce’s Italian Deli promises to be a warm and welcoming place certain to bring customers back time and time again. Pesce, for his part, couldn’t be more enthusiastic to return to his roots and serve his community. He states: “I always knew I wanted a place that I could get to know my customers personally, and serve them in a way that felt like more than a deli, but a tight knit community, like the grocery store I grew up making the sausage in. With five buildings within the complex it is just a perfect fit with what I imagined. I can’t wait to get to know everyone and become part of their lives!”
