Five Points restaurateur creates a second space for authentic Italian food and wine

Just six months after opening Enzo’s Delicatessen on Greene Street in Five Points, Joe Cardinale is gearing up to open another Italian eatery and bar next door.

Gran Sasso Wine Bar will be beside Enzo’s and operate as a small, casual bar serving Italian wines, dessert and antipasto. Cardinale hopes to open Gran Sasso by the end of February.

The menu will be small and Cardinale said he plans to offer a rotating wine list featuring wine from a different region of Italy each month.

After moving to South Carolina from New York almost five years ago, Cardinale noticed a huge part of his daily life missing. The Italian deli that marks many streets in New York was nowhere to be found in Columbia.

“I felt like it was missing here and there’s no real specialty stores for Italian American or Italian ingredients, so I just kind of took a shot and we started as a pop-up at some of the bars around Five Points, just selling sandwiches,” said Cardinale.

In order to get the authentic ingredients to sell in his shops and to make the sandwiches, Cardinale drives a truck to New York to stock up. By filling the void for Italian ingredients in Columbia, Cardinale said he has to make that trip more than he’d like to.

Enzo’s sells grocery items like Italian cold cuts, black and white cookies, sauces made from scratch, olive oil and cannoli.

“We have a lot of stuff that nobody’s ever seen or they miss from home, and it like flies off the shelves so we have to go to New York to get it,” Cardinale said.

After opening Enzo’s during the pandemic, Cardinale said business was good but slowed down significantly with USC students out of town for the holidays and customers not utilizing the outdoor eating space during the cold months.

Other than sourcing ingredients and running Enzo’s, Cardinale also runs the restaurant Ripper’s inside Jake’s on Devine and is completing the construction for Gran Sasso in his free time. While he plans to open Gran Sasso by the end of February, Cardinale admitted it may be later.

Both restaurants are hiring. If interested in working at Enzo’s or Gran Sasso, email enzosdelicatessen@gmail.com or visit the deli.

This story was originally published January 21, 2021 at 10:23 AM.