https://www.laweekly.com/restaurant...the-patriarch-of-eastside-market-2382445Why Doesn't Los Angeles Have a Little Italy?
Actually, Los Angeles did have a Little Italy for over a century. It started in the 1800's on Olvera Street and North Main, when Los Angeles was a Mexican puebla. By the turn of the 20th century, Los Angeles's Little Italy had expanded into present-day Chinatown and eventually to Lincoln Heights and the foothills of Elysian Park. Johnny Angiuli, owner of Eastside Market Italian Deli, can wax nostalgic for hours about the hillside neighborhood, just above Chinatown where his deli is located, that was still a thriving Italian enclave when he immigrated here in 1956 from Adelphia, Italy, at the age of twelve.
The market portion of Eastside Market is long gone. As upwardly mobile Italians moved out of Little Italy, the demand for Italian and Mediterranean produce waned. By the time Johnny Angiuli purchased the market in 1974 from Sam Pontrelli and George Laricchia, after having worked there for fifteen years, he knew times were changing. He converted the market section of the store into a dining room and introduced hot foods to the deli.
Angiuli has seen the neighborhood turnover many times from good to bad to good again. The 1970s, in particular, was a lean decade, when the neighborhood was at a crossroads with an ever-diminishing and aging Italian population and influxes of decidedly non-Mediterranean residents.
