Nearly 20 percent of Connecticut residents surveyed said they had Italian heritage, the most of any state. Rhode Island held that honor in 2007 & 2008.  New Jersey was 17 percent, and New York was just 14 percent.

In the five most Italian states, Staten Island is the most Italian county, at 36 percent. But Middlesex County is fourth, at 26 percent, and New Haven and Litchfield counties are seventh and eighth, at 25 percent.

New Jersey has Jon Bon Jovi (Bongiovi) and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. New York has Andrew Cuomo, Rudy Giuliani and many "Jersey Shore" cast members, including Snooki and Mike "The Situation."

But Connecticut ? Connecticut has the most Italians of any state in the country.

"It surprises me," said Sal Calafiore, whose Santo's Driving School is right across from Mozzicato's on Franklin Avenue in Hartford. "I thought it would be New Jersey, or New York, even."

Nearly 20 percent of Connecticut residents surveyed by census takers in 2009 said they had Italian heritage. New York was just 14 percent, and New Jersey was 17 percent.

That doesn't mean a fifth of Connecticut residents came straight from Italy. Any part Italian counts, so the 20 percent includes people like Michael Ramos, 28, of Branford, who's half Italian, half Portuguese.

What does he think Italian-Americans have contributed to Connecticut?

"Good pizza and a lot of personality," he said, as he picked up takeout linguini with red sauce at Tolli's Apizza in East Haven ? Connecticut's most Italian town.

Italian-Americans are fiero, proud, of Connecticut's most-Italian status, but we do have to admit it might be premature to rename the Nutmeg state the Noce Moscata state.

That's because the bragging rights are based on a survey, and although Connecticut's 19.8 percent was No. 1 in 2009, Rhode Island won the distinction in 2007 and 2008, and the two states have been statistically tied for years.

But we've got Jersey beat, capisce?

Food e Famiglia

When Michelle Borselle was growing up in Berlin, she went to Nonna Rosetta's for lunch every Sunday and Nonna Concetta's for dinner every Sunday. More than a dozen first cousins would be there, too, week in and week out.

"Wow, your family's so big and loud," her "American" friends would say.

Borselle's father, Paul Calafiore, moved to New Britain from Solarino, a village in Sicily, when he was 15 in the late '60s. His father was following his brothers, who had found jobs at The Stanley Works. Many New Britain Italians came from Solarino, and New Britain is Solarino's sister city.

After high school, Borselle's father went to work for an Italian immigrant who ran a masonry business in Hartford, and at age 25, met the boss's 19-year-old daughter, who became his wife. Her parents, like many Italian immigrants in Hartford, were from Floridia.

"If Nonno and Nonna never moved here, you and Mom could've totally met," Borselle used to tease her father. Floridia and Solarino are next to each other.

Borselle, 31, still lives in Berlin. None of her cousins moved out of state.

"We don't venture very far from home," she said, laughing.

On Christmas, the whole menu is Italian."My father would make ricotta. Just ricotta, not sweetened," Borselle said, pronouncing "ricotta" with the gutteral, half-swallowed c. "I tell my brother: 'Either you need to learn it or I am going to learn it. That's not going to die with Dad. We need that ricotta.' "

Borselle talks wistfully about how the further families get from the immigration generation, the more things drift away. But she's fighting that. Her dining room table is decorated with lace from her Nonna Concetta. She speaks Italian fluently ? mostly because her cousin Francesca arrived in the '80s ? but admits she and her husband, who is half-Italian, use Sicilian as a way to keep secrets from their daughters as much as she speaks Italian to them.

"There's so much Italy has contributed to our world, the art, the architecture, the science," Borselle said. But the sense of family she was raised with is what she's most proud of. "That's dissolving a lot in our time," she said. "Anything that was done was done for you. The food, the sacrifices?.."

Sal Calafiore, 43, of Santo's, is one of the youngest people active in the South End Merchants Association in Hartford.

"I'm trying to get all the Italians to come up here, eat and shop," he said. "I'm trying to get Franklin Avenue like it used to be. It's hard. He said some suburbanites say, 'Oh, I wouldn't go down to Franklin Avenue, I'm scared.' "

Italian immigrants and their children migrated from Hartford to Wethersfield and Rocky Hill decades ago, and from New Britain to Berlin, and New Haven to East Haven and elsewhere. As a result, Hartford is dead last in the state's Italianness rankings, and New Haven is near the bottom.

The lobby of Santo's Driving School has a photo collage, including a Santo's Driving School Queen riding in a convertible at a New Britain Italian parade in the '60s, and a clipping in Italian about the opening of the "scuola guida per gli italiani di Hartford." One of the pictures shows Sal's father standing in front of a huge Ford in a piazza in Sicily.

He shipped that Ford from Connecticut to Sicily and back, "just to show America was good," Calafiore said.

In that same lobby, the receptionist is speaking Spanish to a customer signing her daughter up for lessons.

East Haven

The second you enter East Haven, you see Italian surnames on businesses ? restaurants, accountants, jewelry stores, insurance agents. About half of East Haven's residents claim Italian descent.

East Haven's Jamie Dynderski, 19, is Italian and Polish.

"She was 12 years old before she found out that 'Dynderski' wasn't Italian," her mother Sandy said. "She assumed 'Dynderski' was an Italian name."

Seems everybody in East Haven is a little Italian, even those who don't have a drop of Italian blood. In Antonio's Restaurant, four older gentlemen eat lunch and drink wine. None lives in East Haven, and only one is Italian, but they're shaking a leather cup of dice to decide who picks up the bill, and they tease each other boisterously, not sounding at all like Connecticut WASPs.

A few blocks away, in one of the East Haven pizza spots, a half dozen guys from the Coast Guard waited for their pie with skepticism about Connecticut's claim.

Rodney Colon, 39, is from Staten Island and thinks New York pizza is the best. He's astonished that Connecticut is the most Italian state.

"Staten Island is very Italian," said Colon, whose family came from Puerto Rico. He's right. In the five most Italian states, Staten Island is the most Italian county, at 36 percent. But Middlesex County is fourth, at 26 percent, and New Haven and Litchfield counties are seventh and eighth, at 25 percent.

East Haven's cupcake bakery, Sugar, brings a little zucchero to the broader cupcake fad. A vanilla cupcake with cannoli-flavored frosting and filling is the top seller, winning its "Cupcake Wars" episode on the Food Network.

Co-founders Carol Vollono and her daughter Brenda DePonte work with Carol's mother, Elizabeth Bertier, every day. Another sister works there part-time. Bertier's father emigrated from Italy around the turn of the century. "Mama!" Vollono calls into the back, and Bertier comes out, drying her hands from washing dishes. "She's the backbone of Sugar," Vollono says.

Vollono is talkative and has a big smile on her face most of the time. When she talks about how her husband used to complain that he never knew all the kids around the dinner table, you can picture why her house was the one where all the kids wanted to stay over at dinner.

Vollono and DePonte, 28, started the business when DePonte returned home after college, and it has grown from a home-based business to a downtown East Haven anchor, with a steady stream of customers.

Vollono is as ebullient with the customers as she is with a reporter, pulling their legs by telling them her mother is 92.

"Oh, she looks wonderful!" they exclaim. "God bless her!"

Then Vollono owns up. "No, no, she's only 80."

courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-italian-east-haven-20110218,0,1113063.story
 

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[Formerly Italy at St Louis]