Domenic's Italian Bakery & Deli

Tastingmenu.com Review

Domenic’s, Waltham, MA, November 12, 2003 — After college, I stayed for a time in my college town — Waltham, Massachusetts. Lacking any actual skills despite my expensive college education I worked at random jobs trying to figure out what to do with my life. For awhile I worked at a copy shop (you can call me Sir Speedy – actually… please don’t). The copy shop was slowly being run into the ground as a business, so the employees ended up with less and less to do each day. That meant plenty of time for lunch. Luckily there was never a question of what to eat. Next door was a small Italian bakery called Domenic’s. Almost every day I would go to Domenic’s, get a stromboli, some arancini rice balls with little bits of pork in them, and a Clearly Canadian soda. (Remember that? I’m not sure if it was just a Northeast phenomenon. It was colorless fruit soda in cool bottles. But I digress.) The stromboli were these incredible baked items filled with meat, cheese, and tomato sauce. They were served steaming hot, and had this incredible balance both in terms of robust flavor as well as texture. The arancini, were more subtle but still delicious. For years after I moved away I thought often about Domenic’s and their incredible home-cooked food.

And while I’d been back to Boston several times since moving away I’d never gone back. I was determined that on this trip I would get a chance to eat there. I started to wonder whether Domenic’s could be as good as I remembered, or whether I’d mythologized my food experience there because it was a discovery I made when I was just starting out on my own. Either way I was determined to see what was left of my memory. Coming from Seattle just exacerbated my longing. Salumi is an excellent Italian sandwich shop in Seattle, and I really do love the food there. It’s very good. Aside from the easy public relations boost Salumi gets as its proprietor is Armandino Batali, father of celebrity chef Mario Batali, Salumi mainly benefits from the fact that it has this entire city (and entire state for that matter) to itself. There are at  least dozens of Italian bakeries and sandwhich shops on the East Coast that are in the same league as Salumi. But on the east coast, they are often taken for granted. More on this later.

I walked into Domenic’s just before the lunch rush with gray skies hanging over Waltham and local folks hanging out in front of their storefront. I went there with a mission to pick up a couple of sandwiches for us to take out. But I ended up spending over an hour trying various dishes, and bringing back an enormous amount of food. This is not hard to do given the wide selection of delicious Italian homestyle items. The decor is unassuming. A simple green awning hangs over the front of the bakery. The inside is spartan with yellow  walls  decorated with pictures of family members from the bakery’s early years as well as signs relating to the food. Sizes of takeout containers are announced by affixing the containers themselves to the wall. Prices are announced via printed signs clipped to the glass fronts of food tables arranged around the front of the bakery. Much of the food is on display behind this glass. The bakery feels right. You couldn’t create this kind of atmosphere if you tried. And even if you’ve never been there, walking in makes you feel like your home.

I started off by ordering a sub. Large Ham and Provolone with Lettuce, Onion, Hots, Oil, and Spices. As they made this I started looking for some of my old favorites. The arancini were there but the stromboli were no longer on the menu. The arancini are Rice Balls with Ham, Salami, Prosciutto, Eggs, and Mozarella. These deep fried beauties have an almost crusty outside and are filled with a risotto like concoction studded with various small and delicious pork chunks. They are little balls of pure goodness. The flavor is subtle so they’re a good thing to start off with as the flavors coming from the back of the bakery get progressively brighter and stronger as you go.

The sub was absolutely delicious. Like so many other instances in the world, back to basics serves it well. The freshness of the ingredients conspires to give you a sandwich that’s bursting with flavor and freshness ensconced in a crusty yummy cave of bread. The crunch from the lettuce and onion, the almost sweet baseline of the meat, and the spark from the hots, salt, and pepper are all part of what makes it great. The fresh roll, baked in house of course, is almost creamy in its flavor and is the perfect home for all the fresh ingredients. It’s so simple, and so good. The other classic Italian sub we got was the meatball sub. Also deceptively simple, it can be incredibly easy to screw up. You can get too fancy with seasoning the meatballs, the bread can get soggy if there’s too much sauce, etc. It’s a delicate operation and timing is key. The fact that we were eating everything takeout didn’t make it easier. But it worked nonetheless. Just the right amount of sauce, and great bread guaranteed that the sandwich was juicy, not soggy. The meatballs themselves had clear accents of garlic and herbs. But they were in perfect balance, still supporting players to the meat itself. They didn’t dominate. The sub was excellent.

Domenic’s opened in 1979 by Domenic Maione as a bakery. Over the years various non-strictly bakery items were added. While Domenic passed away his son Ciro runs the establishment today. Ciro’s mom, Enza, still works there, baking, and helping out. It was Ciro who started doing food beyond the basics back when he was in high school. And today Domenic’s includes items like Ravioli alla Vanessa – Ricotta cheese ravioli with cream sauce with fire roasted peppers, prosciutto, and peas.  This was absolutely excellent. Simple, savory, fresh, and delicious. Why countless Italian restaurants in the U.S. can’t keep it simple and fresh like this pasta I don’t know. The gnocchi with simple tomato sauce followed the same principles with the same delicious results.

Ciro is not just assembling ingredients and placing them on his bread, he is baking and cooking up a storm in the kitchen of his bakery. The individual ingredients that make up his dishes are all being given equal care and tenderness. Racks are lined with cooling big doughy rolls, with floury soft crusty outsides and soft chewy airy insides. Huge pots of freshly made sauce stand in the kitchen ready to be consumed. Some of this sauce made it onto our gnocchi. It was essentially perfect. It had tons of flavor and was so smooth and sweet. Silky. Eggplant and broccoli are cooking in various pans destined for a variety of dishes. High quality ham is being sliced extra thin for sandwiches. Beautiful marinated tomatoes are not made from pre-dried tomatoes, Ciro starts with fresh and dries them himself. The poor design of the baking oven at Domenic’s has resulted in a pilot light that’s simply too big. It’s a lucky mistake as it’s the heat generated by the pilot, that is just low and steady enough to dry the fresh tomatoes on premises. These oven-dried tomatoes are then marinated for a week to soak up the olive oil and flavor that makes them what they are. Ciro offers me a sample as he would for any interested, enthusiastic, and soon-to-be regular customer. The flavor is oozing from the tomato. It’s bright, tart, sweet, spicy, and exciting. Any sandwich this ends up on lights up with flavor. This particular one didn’t quite make it as far as a sandwich.

Don’t think savory items are the only fare at Domenic’s. Plenty of sweets grace the menu. The star (for me anyway) are the beautiful and delicious cannolis. The perfect thick cream filling, the crunchy shells, and the powdered sugar all make for a wonderful combination. You can’t help but smile after you take a bite of one of these beauties. There are also various pastries and cookies lining the glass units around the bakery. Also excellent.

I don’t know whether I embellished my memory of Domenic’s. But I know that when I returned, roughly 12 years since I’d last been there, not only did it live up to my memory, but it exceeded it. I think back then I didn’t really discriminate as much between food that was great and food that wasn’t. I definitely knew I loved Domenic’s back then, but there was lots of food I ate on a regular basis that was mediocre. And for some reason back then I never asked myself the question of why I’d waste another moment eating something mediocre when a gem like Domenic’s was nearby. And now today, having spent quite a bit more time focused on food than I used to, it’s clear that while I really enjoyed Domenic’s, I didn’t really know just how good I had it. And the truth is that I think that the residents of Waltham, and of metro Boston nearby, have no idea what they have in Domenic’s. I think the Waltham locals mostly take it for granted. (No doubt there’s a few fans who understand how special the dedication to flavor and authenticity is, but I bet this is not true for most Walthamites.) And I bet that the people who live in nearby Boston, don’t even know it exists. When I was talking to Ciro he confided at one point that he was really only using a third of his capacity to in terms of the items he was putting on the menu. Imagining a menu three times the size makes my head spin and my mouth water. Maybe the folks in the area will start frequenting Domenic’s even more so that Ciro can start expanding his menu and treat us to more delicious food. I know that whenever I’m in town, that’s what I’ll be doing.