Mutz (the “u” sounds like “oo” in “toots) is Italian-American for mozzarella, a soft,
wet, hand-kneaded cheese best eaten the day it is made. I know this because I lived for
ten years in Hoboken, New Jersey, where mutz is a way of life. “Even the hardware
stores are making mutz these days,” said Vincent, one of the long time workers at a
beloved Hoboken Italian deli, “but they’re not making — mutz.”
My introduction to this ambrosia came in August 1993 when my fiancé Bob and I
rented a 6000 square foot windowless industrial loft at 6th and Adams Street. Bob had
lived in Hoboken ten years earlier, and while he was paint-blasting our new walls white he
suddenly silenced the machine and said, “Honey, two blocks down is Fiore’s. If nothing’s
changed, Saturday is roast beef and mutz day. Go get us some sandwiches.”
Bob was fourteen years my senior. He had owned Big Apple Scenic, a Broadway
scenery and prop shop, for over a decade, and he knew all kinds of things, from how to
make your own electronic rotisserie for a pig roast to the Mylar solution he devised for the
original A Chorus Line mirrors. Since we’d met seven years earlier I had learned he also
knew a thing or two about food. So when he said “go,” I went.
Above an unfancy glass storefront at 418 Adams Street is an impressive white sign
with red, green and yellow lettering:
Est. 1913
Fiore’s House of Quality
Famous for our Mozzarella
To the right of the storefront were stacks of empty boxes with “43 pounds of Curd”
printed on them. I stepped inside, sniffed and smiled. It smelled like fresh deli meats,
marinating peppers and garlic. Someone hand me a glass of red wine!
Fiore’s is a one room storefront with an off white pressed-tin ceiling and a dilapidated
corn-flower blue and black speckled linoleum floor, which is a little wavy. To your right
as you enter is a glass refrigerator of soft drinks and iced teas. Next to it is a bread bin
with two flimsy plastic doors, which are rarely closed. On the top rack rests a box of the
sanitary thin paper that you are supposed to pick up your bread with, but in fifteen years, I’
ve never seen any one use it. The next rack is stuffed with Hoboken Marie’s brick oven
“sticks.” These aren’t bread sticks, they’re baguettes, but you learn over time to call them
this because you hear the workers say, “Get me a stick,” or, “Anybody need half a stick?”
or, “Frank Sinatra needs five sticks Fedex’d.” Below the Marie’s bread is a softer stick
(not brick oven) from a bakery in North Bergen; and nestling in the bottom of the bin is
my sandwich favorite, round poppy seed rolls. Alongside the bread bin are shelves filled
with olive oil, pasta, red sauce, pesto sauce, pickles, mushrooms, polenta, and other
delicios delectable’s.
The left side of the store begins with a glass counter top displaying silvery trays of long
and short stuffed hot peppers, sun dried tomatoes in oil, and -- flown in from Italy every
other week-- raw pink octopus. Next to that is am old fashioned deli case -- white and
silver trim with a glass front --that has Amaretti cookie tins, crackers boxes and
chocolates stacked on top of it. Always in the top displaying a slab of rare roast beef
oozing blood and many huge cylinders of Genoa salami in white DiLusso casing, plus
numerous squares, rounds and rectangles of meats and cheeses, which you can purchase
by the pound. At the bottom of this case is dried sausage central; dried fennel sausages,
Hormel pepperoni and various Licini sopressatas, patiently waiting to be taken home
where they will be thinly sliced, placed on Italian bread and shared with some Chianti.
Toward the rear of the store, the glass main counter contains a third-of-a-watermelon-
sized piece of extra sharp provolone (cut from a one hundred and twenty pound punching
bag sized Auricchio cheese, which aged for a year on a hook in the back of Fiore’s), a
dozen links of foot-long fresh fennel sausages, and the mutz – which looked, at first
glance, like a bunch of blobs. Plump white oval blobs with skinny necks (dried). Braided
rectangular blobs (fresh). Square blobs with a brownish tinge (smoked). Men wearing
white aprons stand behind the counter making sandwiches and small talking with the
regulars under a sign that reads: “The taste of a good mozzarella is remembered long after
the price is forgotten.”
It has been fifteen years since my first sniff of Fiore’s, and I’ve Fedex’d those white
blobs as holiday gifts to Chicago, San Francisco and points south and east. I’ve lugged
them onto planes and smuggled them into hospital rooms and (maybe this is my worst
crime) started underage children on their way to mutz addiction. (The last time I checked,
it was $8.50 a pound for your basic fresh white blob.) Whenever you bring a fresh-mutz
virgin into Fiore’s the old time countermen sense it, and before you can say “mozzarella
fior di latte” they cut a white, dripping wet slice from the braided blob and dangle it in front
of the newbie with the words, “Wanna try?” Only a fool would say no.
Fiore’s was established in 1913 by John Fiore, a native of Corato, Italy who passed
the business onto his son John Fiore Jr. The current owner John Amato began working
there at fourteen, bought the business in 1965 and has maintained standards ever since
with the help of his brother Vincent, his brother-in-law Dominick (who’s called “Doc”)
and his two sons Vinnie and John Jr. I used to see Josephine, John Amato’s wife, behind
the counter making sandwiches in her white apron and cap. When I inquired recently as
to her whereabouts, her son John Jr. told me, “Oh, she has been shifted to a different
branch of the company taking care of the grandchildren, getting the next generation of
mutz makers ready.”
Not long ago I accompanied my son’s third grade class on a field trip to Fiore’s where
we learned how mozzarella is made.
The basic ingredients are simple enough. You start with curd, salt and 180 degree
water. (Curd is made from cow’s milk, rennet — cut from a calf’s stomach lining, which
has an enzyme that coagulates milk — and vinegar.) Fiore’s curd comes from Polly-O in
those 43 pound boxes.
John Amato stood before a giant silver bowl that rested on three tall iron prongs. He
placed an array of thin wires held taut in a frame on top of the bowl and began pushing
curd through it.
I pointed to the wires. “Is that from a harpsichord?”
“It was part of a piano. We had a frame built so it would fit over this bowl. It cuts
curd evenly.” He poured six pots of hot water over the curd and began stirring with a
wooden paddle.
Slowly, the white mixture separated into two parts, a thin milk-like liquid called whey
and a large soft blob that resembled white taffy. ( If you place whey in the refrigerator, it
will separate and a layer of butter will rise to the top ). Mr. Amato scooped up the blob
using the paddle and pulled it, like taffy which forces the bubbles out. “Not ready yet,” he
said. His hands would tell him when it reached the right consistency – every bubble had to
be gone and the blob had to become one giant silky smooth piece of taffy.
“How many pounds of mutz does forty-three pounds of curd make?” a teacher asked.
“About forty pounds,” John answered, “A softer curd gives you less, a harder curd,
more. It’s up to the cow.”
After about five minutes of stirring, resting and testing, John Amato said, “It’s ready.”
Then he squeezed off strips, wound them together into two and half pound rectangles of
braided mutz that he placed in a stainless steel sink full of cold water.
As I watched him braid one after another after another I asked, “Did you have a
daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever braid her hair?”
“No,” he answered with a small laugh.
John Amato’s hands have been making mutz for fifty-five years, Vincent’s for fifty and
Doc’s for forty-three. “What does making mutz do to your hands?” I asked.
“Your hands get used to the heat, but going from hot to cold to hot causes arthritis.”
After all the braids were made they were transferred to rectangular silver bins and covered
with water. When the customer orders mutz in the front room, the employee goes into the
backroom and quickly dunks the braid into a salted water bath for the final touch of flavor.
In some delis there are informative, often cutesy signs that list the products for sale. Not
at Fiore’s. The only way to find out what the daily sandwich specials are is to join one of
the long lines and ask the more knowledgeable strangers around you. They will tell you
that Monday is warm virginia ham, mutz and a sweet mustardy sauce; Tuesday is corned
beef, mutz and a yellow mustard; Wednesday is sausage with red sauce and mutz;
Thursday is roast beef and mutz; Friday is Italian or American Tuna and mutz, and
Saturday is, as my fiancé Bob remembered, the day for roast beef and mutz.
Another thing you’ll discover is that it’s OK to double park while you run into Fiore’s for
your mutz fix. Around noon, Monday through Saturday, parking is two deep on this
block. If you want their goodies for a holiday, place your order early, by phone and bring
cash (they do not take credit cards). There’s no special line to pick up phone orders. But
if you learn the voices of the family members who take the orders and they learn your
voice, with some eye contact and a warm smile, you could get out of Fiore’s with your
order real quick.
As our third-grade class was getting ready to leave the fragrant deli, John Jr. filled a
brown paper bag with generous portions of smoked mutz, fresh mutz and coal-fire-oven
bread. “You guys are smarter than the tobacco companies,” I said, smiling at him, “Get
the young ones hooked early.”
John Jr. handed me the bag and beamed. Fiore's Deli Website