New Termini Bros. spot, Nonna & Pop’s, serves classic Italian pastries, ice cream, and more
The Termini sons have converted their dad's luncheonette into a shop offering Italian pastries, ice cream, and coffee, plus a couple of tables for seating.
One unfortunate side effect of the pandemic was the closing of Mr. Joe’s Cafe, the homespun luncheonette that Vincent Termini Sr. ran as a passion project in Termini Bros.’ original location, across the street from his family’s South Philadelphia bakery.
For 14 years, “Mr. Vince” oversaw a menu that included Italian soups, braciole with gnocchi, frittatas, and one of the city’s finer roast pork sandwiches. He named Mr. Joe’s in honor of his father, who was in his mid-90s when he died in 1994.
Most important, said Termini, 83, Mr. Joe’s was a gathering place for his friends and customers over the last 65 years. “I miss them,” he said.
Termini and his wife, Barbara, who met in the early 1960s when she was a teenager working at the counter (they kept their relationship hush-hush at first), have inspired their sons, Vincent and Joseph, to redo Mr. Joe’s.
It’s now Nonna & Pop’s, a corner pastry shop with a few seats.
Nonna & Pop’s debuted last week with a line created especially for the shop, including some goodies not available at Termini’s. There are lobster tails and sfogliatelle — the cream-filled Italian pastries that ideally are baked, filled, and consumed on the same day — plus hand-rolled taralli biscotti, cheesecake slices, pizzelles, pignoli, and amaretti cookies, elephant ears, almond horns, and filled-to-order cannoli.
There’s also an espresso machine for La Colombe coffee, and an ice cream freezer with eight flavors from Bassetts, which is preparing to introduce an exclusive spumoni for the Terminis. Toppings include amaretti cookie and cannoli shell pieces.
The shop was updated but has retained its old-time airs. “I’m very happy with this,” Termini said. “They dug up a lot of old pictures and had them reframed. It’s a trip down memory lane.”
The children initially considered “Mr. Vince’s” as the name, updating the idea of “Mr. Joe’s.” The low-key Vincent Sr. didn’t want it that way but agreed to daughter Maria Termini-Romano’s suggestion of “Nonna & Pop’s.” That’s how he and Barbara are known to their grandchildren.
The family story goes like this: Giuseppe Termini and his older brother, Gaetano, who emigrated from the Sicilian village of Enna, opened their bakery at 1514 S. Eighth St. in 1921, sleeping on the floor in the early years. In 1938, they moved to the much larger building across the street at 1523 S. Eighth, selling the original building to Pete Barbaro, a.k.a. Pete the Barber. Barbaro’s widow sold it back to the Terminis in the 1990s. The Terminis have a parking lot next door to the bakery, a precious commodity in the brick row house neighborhood.
You may catch Vince Sr. at the bakery, or at the pastry shop. Though he’s officially retired, son Vincent Jr. said, “he’s always a daily resource of advice and perspective, like a retired don.”