Everybody Eats Mozzarella – Recollections of John Amato, Sr.

Generations of hungry customers have come to Fiore’s House of Quality at 414 Adams Street in Hoboken to purchase a little bit of heaven: the deli’s signature fresh mozzarella. Visitors to the shop—first opened in 1929 by Alphonse Fiore, then run by his son, Joseph, then purchased by John Amato Sr. in 1965, and run today with one of Amato’s sons, John Jr.—demand the Fiore’s sandwich-makers put “mutz” on everything, including, in what was once nearly a culinary affront, on a tuna sub. “Oh, if the original owner were here, you come in here for a sandwich like that, he would have changed it,” John Sr. laughs. “’You wanna ruin my business? Get out!’”

But the goal of the Amatos, father and son, is to please their customers. They know their product is irresistible. They will add it to whatever sandwich the customer orders; they sell it by the pound, and make smoked mozzarella, too. Fiore’s offers a selection of different meats and hard cheeses, but their “mutz,” in a town packed with delis offering mozzarella, is legendary. “Once they taste our mozzarella, we’ve got them,” John Sr. says. “We made a good friend.”

Everybody Eats Mozzarella is the 38th chapbook in our Hoboken Oral History Project, produced in collaboration with the Hoboken Public Library.