Josh Imhof | features editor

At 5 a.m. everyday, Marco Merante is already choking on the smell of chili powder and paprika.

His hands are covered in red chunks of meat as he feeds a potent mixture of swine and spices through his grandfather’s meat grinder.

He now only orders his steak well done.

“There’s nothing wrong with the food, but you cut 80 pounds of pork butt a week, you’re going to start looking at ground beef and pork and chicken differently,” he said.

Merante is the owner of Merante Brothers Italian Market, a specialty Italian grocery store located in Pittsburgh’s Uptown neighborhood. The market serves as a breakfast and lunch spot for locals, as well as a meeting place for Merante and his family, who play an important role in his life.

Merante’s grandfather, Italo, and his great-uncle, Salvatore, originally opened the market in 1962 after immigrating from the town of Pentone in southern-Italy. At that time, local businesses lined the streets of Uptown and a diverse group of ethnicities populated the homes.

“It was a mix of everybody,” Merante said. “It was Italians. There were Jewish owned laundromats. There was kosher food. There was Italian food. There were pizzerias. There were business districts.”

Around this time, the city began divesting from the neighborhood in favor of funding larger projects like the Civic Arena and I-579, cutting Uptown off from the rest of Pittsburgh.

Many residents left.

Through all of this, Merante Brothers stayed open. Italo died in 1992, but Salvatore kept the market alive until the early 2000s when he had to close due to personal health issues.

For years after, the store remained empty.

Merante went through grade school and planned on attending college. His father, Pasquale, worked as a plumber.

Then, one day, his dad surprised him. He said it was time to reopen.

“I didn’t know really what to say. I never thought I’d hear him say that,” Merante said.

Soon after, he, his father and his brother, Vincenzo, began getting the business off of the ground.

Merante had finished a year at Thiel College, but quickly transferred to the Community College of Allegheny County to finish a business degree. This helped him with some aspects of running a business, but not all.

In the classroom, Merante studied T-charts and financial documents. At the market, he studied menus and customer habits.

Hours once spent watching lectures quickly turned into hours of prepping meals at the store.

“There’s so much stuff that a textbook wouldn’t tell you until you actually did it,” he said. “I was thrown into the dark … I just kind of had to teach myself.”

The learning curve was steep, but things started to come together. The market developed a cult following and regained some long-time supporters.

“Everyone who has grown up in the neighborhood we’re in right now, or just family friends, they definitely propped us up, almost because everyone remembered us,” Merante said. “The store never changed. It was never a different business. Everyone just knew it was closed for a long time.”

Merante also found some personal connections along the way. His girlfriend, Gabriella Talerico, had an unexpected connection to the business.

“We actually found out my nanna had shopped in the store,” she said. “She remembered it being there.”

Once things solidified, Vincenzo moved away for a career in Florida. Pasquale took a backseat role and left the reins to Merante, who now runs most day-to-day operations himself.

It is no easy task.

Merante wakes at 4:15 a.m. each day, shoots down Boulevard of the Allies and immediately gets to work. Some days, he makes over 200 breakfast sandwiches by himself.

“[I get] nervous talking about it because some mornings, it’s actually insane,” he said.

In June 2024, the store faced a devastating setback when an adjacent building collapsed, causing the market to close its doors once again.

Undeterred, Merante used the opportunity to reset and reevaluate the business.

He looked at the menu and asked what worked and what didn’t. He backed away from traditional grocery items and zeroed in on specialty Italian items, hot foods and deli sandwiches.

In February, he finally reopened, and customers found their way back.

Cornell Downing, who lives down the street at Shepherd’s Heart Veteran’s Home, comes in regularly for the breakfast sandwiches.

“I’ve been eating them two at a time,” he said. “I gotta have it.”

He heard about the restaurant through word of mouth, and has been coming ever since.

“It’s like a marriage. I’m faithful. I’m always gonna come here until I’m underground,” Downing said.

That fits into Merante’s goals for the restaurant.

“I don’t sell tobacco, I don’t sell lottery, I sell good food. That’s what I want be known for. I want to be known as that little Italian market on the corner that absolutely has the best sandwiches ever. You can go there and find something new every day.”

Josh Imhof can be reached at imhofj@duq.edu