From the Pope to Francis Ford Coppola: Inventing the Godfather Sandwich

Walk into any decent Italian deli and you’ll probably find on the menu a Godfather sandwich. In some shops, sandwich makers use the Italian term Padrino, but the sentiment is the same: this is the best. 

While the exact combination of meats and cheese will vary, the king of deli sandwiches usually includes prosciutto di parma, with at least one or more cured sausages like salami, mortadella, or capicola. Add to this a soft cheese like mozzarella or American-style provolone, sweet or sharp, and then something crispy like arugula, tomatoes, and pepperoncini. All this is dressed with oil and vinegar and wrapped together in a long hero roll. 

Italian deli meat sandwiches as we think of them today originated in the early twentieth century, a product of Italian immigrants in America. However, the art of preserved meats dates back even earlier. Before refrigeration, salt, smoke, or dry aging were the preferred methods of preservation. On the Italian peninsula, salumeria, specialty shops focusing on products like salami, first grew popular in the 16^th century. At the time, these primarily served wealthy families.

Salumeria gained popularity as a result of Pope Gregory XIII’s edict. Clergy members at the time kept large household staff, a fact Pope Gregory XIII disliked believing the practice ostentatious and wasteful. To alleviate his concerns, in 1572, he initiated new austerity policies. The rules limited how many chefs Bishops could keep in their household and as result, many cooks lost their jobs. Soon after, these newly unemployed cooks began selling prepared foods like charcuterie in local shops. Not only did this reduce the workload for the remaining staff, it created jobs for the many trained cooks who now sold prepared foods similar to modern cold cuts. 

Ordinary Italians wouldn’t have access to these kinds of expensive foods for centuries, and food insecurity is one of the main reasons so many Italians departed in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Higher wages in the United States meant Italians could buy the meats and other expensive foods they couldn’t afford in Italy.

Settling in cities like New York also meant Italian immigrants lived in close proximity to Jewish and German immigrants, two groups responsible for importing the idea of the delicatessen from eastern Europe. These specialty food shops, not unlike Italian Salumeria, first appeared in the 1870s, many selling kosher meat. Kosher meat was considered higher quality and safer and often sought out even by people who were not Jewish. Like salumeria, Kosher delicatessens sold prepared food, and in New York, they became a mainstay of culinary traditions. 

By the 1920s, New York City had grown into the sandwich capital of the world, in part fueled by the rise of the delicatessen. Food writer George Jean Nathan cataloged more than 1,000 unique sandwich recipes, and of course, Italian Americans contributed to the list. This sandwich “fad,” as Nathan referred to the increasingly popular food, led to thousands of dedicated sandwich shops in the city, and he even mentions “imported salami sandwiches.” Nathan might be making the earliest reference to an Italian combo sandwich, although it’s still not quite a Godfather. 

Around the same time, across the Hudson River in Paterson, New Jersey, Dominic Conti has been credited with creating a modern Italian hero. Conti called his combination ham, salami, and cheese sandwich a “submarine” after a small submersible vessel he had visited. The early underwater boat invented by John Phillip Holland was tested in the Passaic River near Paterson, and since Conti’s sandwich looked similar to the boat, he named the sandwich for it. 

However, by the 1930s, “hero” was the preferred term in New York City. John Mariani, author of the Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, notes the phrase originated with Clementine Paddleford, a writer for New York Herald Tribune. Similar Italian combination sandwiches developed wherever Italian immigrants landed. For instance, a round Italian meat sandwich comes from New Orleans. In 1904, Central Grocery began selling the first muffuletta. The sandwich starts with a circular Sicilian-style bread and includes layers of preserved pork, ham, and cured sausages along with olive tapenade and provolone cheese. The muffuletta became a local favorite and only gained national notoriety with the rise in food-related travel shows.  

In each region, a local term was coined to describe Italian sandwiches, including “grinder” in New England, “wedge” around Westchester County, New York, “hoagie” around Philadelphia and southern New Jersey, “submarine” near Groton’s naval base, “bomber” in upstate New York, and a plain old “Italian” in Maine. But not all Italian sandwiches are Godfathers, a sandwich that is generally bigger and filled with more meat than an ordinary Italian combo. 

So when exactly did the Godfather bless sandwich eaters? Most people agree the term is a result of the release of The Godfather in 1972, but nobody seems to know who was actually first. The Ro-Lynn Deli near Philadelphia has been serving the sandwich they now call the Godfather since 1965 but was only renamed after the release of the film, according to Adam Erace over at Taste. But on the West Coast, at roughly the same time, Giannino’s in Beverly Hills was serving a Godfather with ham, mortadella, provolone, and mixed peppers. Anthony’s in Mamaroneck, New York also claims to be the home of the Godfather sandwich since 1987. 

Regardless of who first christened a deluxe version of Italian hero “the Godfather,” the sentiment remains the same: this sandwich is special. Of the various recipes across the menus of sandwich shops everywhere, the Godfather stands out as particularly sumptuous. The irony of all this of course is that while The Godfather features cannoli, meatballs, tomato sauce, sausages, veal marsala, and antipasti, there is nary an Italian Hero.