When Franco Schittino’s Sicilian ancestors first opened their butcher shop and market in Catonsville in the 1970s, “the family was really wary of being too authentic or too Italian,” he said. “It was a big deal to try to do anything new.”

Fast forward to 2025, and a boom in international travel and shows like “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy” have given us all a new appreciation of the country’s rich culinary traditions.

“Everybody wants to be Italian,” said ZaVino Italian Marketplace owner Gino Kozera. And we want to eat like it, too, going beyond just the classic dishes like pizza and pasta (though we’ll have some of those, too). With two separate markets just over two miles apart on Falls Road, Kozera and Schittino are helping lead a renaissance in Baltimore’s Italian American dining options.

ZaVino Italian Marketplace

Kozera’s eatery and wineshop, which opened last year inside the Village of Cross Keys shopping center, features a well-rounded menu of sandwiches, pizza and stellar sides like mozzarella sticks made with Grande cheese from Wisconsin.

It takes a lot of work to look this effortless: ZaVino’s chef Andrew Weinzirl said their amazing Caesar salad, which includes homemade parm crisps, is the culmination of his long culinary career that’s spanned places like Brewer’s Art, Maggie’s Farm, The Choptank and Artifact Coffee.

“That dressing is pretty much like the one that I developed at Brewer’s Art, and then changed with what products that I have at every location,” he said. He keeps some tinned fish should a customer request to have anchovies added on.

The marketplace serves both thick, Sicilian-style pizza and more traditional neo-Neopolitan options. The Sicilian version, which is sold by the slice, has experimental topping combinations based on what’s in stock. The neo-Neopolitan pies, charred in an oven made by Beltsville manufacturer Marra Forni, are crispier and travel better than traditional pizzas you might find in Naples.

For the most part, it’s food designed to be eaten to go. The restaurant offers only a few chairs at a bar inside, though Kozera said this spring they will add more outdoor seating where diners can enjoy a bottle of wine from their extensive, mostly Italian collection. On your way to the cash register, stop by a small selection of meats, cheeses and other goodies to that Sicilian-style serving tray you picked up at Williams Sonoma next door.

I am also happy to report that ZaVino is now the third place I’ve found that sells a decadent Roman cream puff called maritozzi. (The others are Cafe Dear Leon and Doppio Pasticceria, which moves into its forever home on 29th Street this month.)

Kozera, who spent 16 years with Panera and just recently closed his Locust Point pub Amber, is no stranger to the trials of the food business. But he hopes he found a formula that works with ZaVino. Next up: plans to expand catering, which Weinzirl hopes will eventually make up a third of the business.

Scittino’s on Falls Road

Just up the street at 6241 Falls Road is Schittino’s brand new market and sit-down restaurant, Scittino’s, an upmarket offshoot of the Catonsville original. (By the way, that’s not a typo you’re seeing. The “sch” makes a hard “c” sound in Italian, but not in English. To avoid any mispronunciations, they spelled their store “Scittino’s.”)

The new Baltimore County branch reflects Franco Schittino’s big ambitions for the family business, which he took over in 2019 after a career working with the government. In addition to the small marketplace, you can find a bar, tables for seating and an extensive selection of otherwise impossible-to-find products that may just change the way you look at Italian food.

Americans are accustomed to thinking of panettone, the Christmas fruitcake born in Northern Italy, as impossibly dry, but that’s because they’ve never had the artisanal versions the store carries. “One of the advantages of being in business more than 50 years, and having the business founded by some old-school Sicilians, is all the relationships that they’ve built with the other people that immigrated with them,” Schittino said.

A well-curated butcher case shows off cuts of beef and housemade sausage while paying tribute to Schittino’s grandfather, a former butcher in Lascari, Sicily.

Cheese lovers should head over to the charcuterie counter, which includes offerings such as the Provolone del Monaco, so named because it was originally crafted by monks. “The process goes back over 1,000 years,” Schittino said, making it the oldest continuous provolone recipe in the world — “the OG of provolone.”

At $40 a pound, it’s so rare and exclusive that the store was on a monthslong waitlist to get it in stock. The cheese, pungent and intriguing, can stand on its own or be eaten with honey or fig jam.

It’s also a required ingredient in spaghetti alla nerano — a favorite pasta dish of, you guessed it: Stanley Tucci.