The Luncheonette

Once a week, Marcelle Soviero's mother took her to Uncle Joe's soda shop, Soviero's Luncheonette. This family-owned restaurant became Marcelle's safe haven, where she learned compassion and acceptance from her family and the patrons who frequented.

My great Uncle Joe purchased the soda shop on Main Street in Huntington in 1967, the year I was born. My mother would bring me to Soviero’s Luncheonette on Tuesdays when my older siblings were in school. Once a week, we’d step into the smells of sizzling bacon and sides of fries, the door chiming behind us. 

Mother and I sat at the stainless steel counter, facing the mirror-backed walls and long-necked fountains that spurt soda water. Spinning on one of the twirly stools, I had only to decide between egg creams, grape trickles, lemon fizzes, and cherry smashes. I was happy, a blonde pony-tailed 5-year-old, known by all as Joe’s niece. 

I usually ordered a chocolate egg cream, before my lunch—always a grilled cheese—“smiley food,” is what Mother called it. My drink came with a long-handled spoon in a fancy glass and kisses from Uncle Joe or Aunt Milly, or whatever family was in the place. Italian-style kisses—pinched cheeks and “you’re getting so big.” I was shy then, still am, but I loved those kisses. I know now how lucky I was that I had a safe place all through my girlhood that was mine, where I knew going in that everybody was going to like me.

I took great sips of soda, listening to the voices trill, and the slow hum of the fans hung in rows from the tin ceilings, the sound of grease on the griddle, and the toaster’s pop. “Why would anyone go to the Hamburger Choo Choo?” my mother would say. The Choo Choo was another local favorite, three doors down. It’s true, hamburgers there were served tableside on a small train set, but Soviero’s burgers were twice the size and came wrapped in wax paper in a little red basket with flat-cut fries.

And Soviero’s had tap root beer, blue plate specials, and whipped cream made by hand. Some days I’d follow my uncle downstairs to the basement, a magical place with mixing bowls and candy molds stacked on wood shelves. Uncle Joe showed me what to do. The simplest of recipes: Take a half gallon of cold heavy cream, add pinches of sugar, and beat to the consistency of cloud.

In spring the basement was a candy factory. My aunts and uncles and cousins lined up, melting the milk chocolate made by hand and pouring it into iron Easter bunny molds. What fun popping the three-dimensional bunnies out! Bunnies in profile, bunnies in top hats, bunnies jumping, caught mid-air in sweet leaps. My job was to help wrap the chocolate in clear cellophane, my small fingers pinching the puckered top while Uncle Joe tied the baker’s string. The front window of the Luncheonette that faced Main Street became a bucolic diorama, filled with chocolate bunnies nestled in pastel blue baskets, jelly beans peeking through the faux grass.