As sure as life, death, and taxes — if you ask a Rhode Islander to give you a recommendation for their favorite local spot to grab a sandwich, you’ll get an enthusiastic answer.

Perhaps that is what makes whoever is crowned as RI Food Fight’s “Peoples Choice for Best Sandwich” in Rhode Island even more impressive.

The local social media channel boasts over 56,000 followers and scours the state looking for the best bites in a whole host of different categories. As you might imagine, the competition over the title of “best sandwich” will draw plenty of contestants, and opinions.

But when all the dust settled after this year’s voting ended in March, it was a small East Providence establishment, tucked into the northeast corner of the city near the Seekonk border, that rose above all others.

Keeping it simple, and delicious
For Massimo Dell'Olio — who took over as owner of Italian Corner Deli and Market in 2020 from his brother-in-law, Osvaldo Pirro, who started the business with Dell’Olio’s sister, Angela, in 2005 — the recipe for success is simple. And that is to, well, keep it simple.

“The freshness, the consistency, and the quality,” he said when asked what puts their food above the rest in a state with a ludicrously high number of worthy eateries per capita. “Quality in the food, and quality in the service.”

Perfecting the simple, he said, is what all good Italian food has in common. And in a state where there are plenty of Italian restaurants making Americanized Italian food and making it quite well, Dell’Olio and his team at Italian Corner hang their hat and gained a loyal following doing things a little more authentically.

You won’t find meatballs on the menu, for example.

“Yeah, you can find them in Italy, but nobody in Italy would trust somebody to go make it the way that their mother is going to make it,” Dell’Olio said. “They would be skeptical of some sort of ground meat that you can hide stuff in. So we’ve never made them and it’s kind of something that we stood behind.”

In their earlier days, when Pirro called the shots, menu items were presented in the way they were meant to be eaten, and substitutions were either discouraged or outright denied.

“His big thing was like, ‘I’m not going to take some really nice Scotch and pour Coke in it,’” said Josh Stiness, who started working part-time at Italian Corner in its early days and ultimately came back in 2022 to become its general manager.

Although that policy has softened quite a bit since the change in ownership — you won’t get side eye from a staff member if you ask for ketchup on your caprese (although maybe you should) — Stiness said a huge part of the deli’s continued success is their enduring commitment to combining high-quality, authentic, and fresh ingredients that would hold up to the scrutiny of old-timers from the Old Country.

“That’s why we don’t call [their version of an Italian grinder] ‘The Italian’, because in Italy you’re going to get one meat, one cheese. Very simple. It’s not about more,” Stiness said. “I think some of our sandwiches really highlight that. The approach of just one meat and one cheese and maybe some arugula.”

One thing that really sets apart Italian Corner from other delis? Their homemade salsa verde that comes standard on almost every one of their sandwiches; a spreadable medley of parsley, garlic, capers, onions, white balsamic vinegar, olive oil, vegetable oil, and anchovy paste with a controversial binding ingredient as a base.

“It seems to be a little bit of a polarizing ingredient because it is mayo-based,” Stiness said. “But it is a typical dressing that you'd see for a cold meat in Italy. So I think the people who know, they know, and come back for it. We sell it in 8-ounce containers and we can hardly keep it on the shelf.”

Handmade, and Guy Fieri-approved
The other secret ingredient to Italian Corner’s success is simple in concept but difficult in execution, and that is to go through the efforts to make as many things as possible from scratch, and by hand.

From their pasta and breads, to their sauces, soups, and frozen to-go meals, corner cutting is not a part of the business model. And it’s partially that attention to detail which helped them secure the opportunity of a lifetime and forever put them on the map — when legendary Food Network star Guy Fieri came to town to sample some of their food during the fall of 2012 to tape the 9th episode of the 15th season of the comfort television favorite, “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives”.

The episode focused on eateries that specialized in making things by hand, and Fieri found himself enamored by the Italian Corner’s use of an automated tortellini machine, and the freshness of the ingredients.

Since the episode aired, the explosion in popularity was quick and intense.

“After the show, we went from running that machine bi-monthly maybe, to a once every two weeks type of thing,” Stiness said. “Now we’re doing it almost weekly.”

“When I first started here [in 2007], on our busiest day we were not even getting close to 100 sandwiches a day. Today, on a not busy day, we’re hitting 300 sandwiches a day,” Dell’Olio said. “On a busy Saturday, we hit probably 560 in one day. Our goal is to at least 450 a day. That’s a decent day for us.”

While Dell’Olio certainly credits the show with the explosion in business, he said they have needed to sustain that interest through their own hard work.

“It's really up to you to stand by what he might have said on TV,” he said.
“If we have a customer that comes in and says, ‘Hey, I came here from Connecticut because I saw you on Triple D’, you don’t want to disappoint them,” added Stiness.

That popularity, combined with the charge to make things fresh daily, means a lot of calculations have to happen in the background each day to determine their supply and demand. After all, if you sell 560 sandwiches, that means you needed 560 loaves of freshly baked bread. Dell’Olio said they employ around 22 people in total, three of which are dedicated just to baking.

But all the other factors aside, the thing that keeps people coming back winds up being something Townies recognize and appreciate perhaps more than any other Rhode Island community.

“The key to our success is probably service, and putting the customer first,” Stiness said. “I think a lot of people who come back are regulars. We try to know them by name and we see the same faces. So we are very appreciative of the regulars and making sure to take care of those people.”