To 417-landers, The Hill is somewhere you go when you’re visiting St. Louis and you’re craving Italian. But to longtime Springfield restaurateur Jay Parrino, it’s where he grew up. Parrino was born in Sicily, Italy, but immigrated to St. Louis with his parents when he was young.
“[The Hill] was a community, and you never had to leave,” Parrino says. “The dentist was Italian, the local doctor was Italian, the owner of the small grocery store was Italian. We even had our own little department store, so you didn’t have to go outside of that enclave.”
Parrino moved to Springfield in 1983 and decided to bring a taste of The Hill to Springfield. He opened J. Parrino’s Bar & Grill that same year on Battlefield, moved it to the fourth floor of the Heers building in 1987, and just a couple of years later helped launch Pasta Express with his former, late business partner. Queen City Deli (1647 E. Sunshine St., Springfield) is his latest and now one-and-only concept, which means he gets to devote his entire attention to it. And judging by the mouthwatering STL- and NY-inspired sandwiches he doles out, he does just that.
One of his most popular (and in our book, most tasty) sandwiches is The Burnes. In fact, the menu describes it as “the sandwich that made Parrino’s famous.” It has just three ingredients: beef tenderloin, horseradish and garlic cheese bread. When designing this sandwich, Parrino drew inspiration from one on the menu at his very first restaurant job, which was at an Italian steakhouse on The Hill. It was named after a local newspaper sports writer, Bob Burnes, who ordered this sandwich on the regular, and Parrino decided to keep the same name to continue paying homage to Burnes.
There’s also plenty of pasta on the menu and a small retail section of Italian market essentials that you won’t want to sleep on. Parrino is friends with the owners of DiGregorio’s Italian Market on The Hill, so he always makes a pit stop there to pick up inventory when he visits.
Queen City Deli has now been in business for 13 years. And while the core menu hasn’t changed much, Parrino keeps things fresh by running a series of specials. Any time he goes out to eat and orders a sandwich, he considers it R&D.
One of the best sandwiches he’s had as of late was at Central Market in Dallas, Texas. He can still name exactly everything they put on this sandwich, down to the chipotle aioli and caramelized mushrooms and onions.
“I have what my wife thinks is a really weird habit,” he says. “I always take sandwiches apart. I dissect them to see what they’ve got going on.”
We, for one, will never question Parrino’s creative process when it comes to crafting sandwiches.
Dining and Cooking