The atmosphere at Garbarino’s is classic New York Italian — low light, attentive service, crooners on the soundtrack — with understated urban character. It’s subtly stylish, the kind of place you picture when you imagine a prototypical Italian joint.
Get Your Italian Fix at Garbarino Bros. Market in Verona
For the atmosphere, you’ll have to go to the restaurant (at 5925 Baum Blvd. in East Liberty). For the food, though, you can be just about anywhere — as long as you stop at Garbarino Bros. Market first.
The Verona storefront, which opened in November, features popular dishes from the restaurant, prepared and ready to go. You can grab entrees such as chicken parmesan and rigatoni in red-cream sauce, soups (the red-pepper bisque is a perfect accompaniment to a quick grilled cheese), meatballs and even full trays of lasagna, all ready for easy reheating. (The entrees come in vented to-go containers for easy microwaving.)
The market is a callback to “the original Garbarino Bros.,” as owner Andrew Garbarino puts it, a Brooklyn market that opened in the 1930s. It was a busy neighborhood staple — until World War II. “They all agreed that they had a more important thing to do,” he explains, “and that was the end of the market.” (All three brothers survived the war but didn’t reopen the market upon returning home.)
More than 80 years later, Garbarino opened his namesake restaurant on one floor of the building at 5925 Baum, sharing space with his former French restaurant, the Twisted Frenchman. Garbarino’s survived the pandemic, though the Twisted Frenchman didn’t; the other floor is now used as an event space.
Bringing Fresh Flavors to the Community
Even while building back a staff and clientele, Garbarino was hoping to expand the business. “I always dreamt that I would have a little market. Finding product is so cool to me — learning about it, understanding why [markets] have [certain items].” That interest has filled one wall of the market with hard-to-find items imported from Italy (or select American purveyors of Italian staples), from pasta and sauce to premium items such as high-end olive oils and single-ingredient preserves.
“The whole purpose is [to offer] things that you’re not going to go to Giant Eagle and find,” Garbarino says. “I want the more unique things … Everything here, there’s a reason why we have it. Either because my grandmother used it, or it’s something nostalgic to me.”
On a cold Tuesday afternoon, a steady stream of shoppers comes in, often for one or two specific items — bread and canned tomatoes, maybe, or a couple of to-go dishes for that night’s dinner. Customers linger at the counter, chatting over complimentary espresso.
Garbarino prepares the food in the morning in East Liberty, then stocks the refrigerators in Verona. The path, then, goes from Italy to Brooklyn, before jumping forward a century or so and detouring through Pittsburgh neighborhoods — yet the result is undoubtedly a street-level, community success story.
Story by Sean Collier
Photography by Dave Bryce