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 While there's no place like home, South Florida comes close
Sunday, October 13, 2002 By Georgene Gallo and Anthony Gallo Jr.
Here we are, visiting a region known for its waterways, where per capita boat ownership is among the nation's highest. There are restaurants that the locals swear by, including Primanti's and Le Mont. There's a beautiful new baseball stadium where fireworks displays are done expertly by Zambelli Internationale. The Rooney family owns a popular sporting enterprise, and friendly Rooneys often turn up at authentic Irish pubs.
-- Georgene Gallo and Anthony Gallo Jr.
On Florida's Swanee River lies a state park honoring Lawrenceville's favorite son, Stephen Foster
Sure, this could be Pittsburgh, but instead it's South Florida, where the influence of many Pittsburgh traditions has taken hold.
It's not that these prominent Pittsburgh families and restaurants have abandoned Pittsburgh. Rather, they are creating a link between the north and the south and expanding their marketplaces. They're making their nests big enough to accommodate the annual flight of the winter snowbirds who come back home to roost, every summer.
Ed Dunlap, owner of Le Mont restaurant on Mount Washington, says, "I'm a Pittsburgher. I don't think I'd ever move to Florida permanently."
To understand how it came to pass that Dunlap opened a second restaurant in Florida, one must first know what the original Le Mont means to him. He and his wife, Anna, had their wedding reception there 32 years ago.
"We became attached to it," he says, while getting to know and appreciate the restaurant's staff and management. So, through the years, Le Mont was the setting for their family gatherings and celebrations.
In 1999, Dunlap learned that Le Mont was for sale. Maybe it was time, he thought, to have a sideline to his career as owner of Centimark Corp., the largest industrial roofing company in North America. So he bought Le Mont and soon set out to renovate and beautify it.
"Over the course of winters, we would make trips to the Palm Beaches," says Dunlap, whose brother-in-law owns 20 restaurants in South Florida. But he wasn't thinking of opening a second restaurant until a call came from his wife's cousin in Palm Beach.
"I found a spot exactly like Le Mont," he reported, and Dunlap immediately wondered how the hilly terrain of Mount Washington could ever be compared to the flatness of the Florida landscape.
But, the restaurant, on the 20th floor of Palm Beach Island's tallest office building, "blew us away," Dunlap says. "The view was spectacular. So what if the place overlooked the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway instead of the Three Rivers?
Dunlap bought it, beautified it and called it LeMont of the Palm Beaches. Inside, it looks just like LeMont in Pittsburgh, down to identical carpeting. The views from each restaurant are different but equally stunning.
Not different at all are the firework displays that can light up night skies all over South Florida as well as Pittsburgh. They're the same in both places because one family named Zambelli does them all.
Zambelli Fireworks Internationale has been doing business in Florida since the 1960s. Its southern regional office is located in Boca Raton.
Marcy Zambelli, who works out of the Florida office, is the daughter of George Zambelli, Sr., the company's president and general manager. She explains that although the Zambelli family does business all over the world, "everything originates in New Castle," the company's corporate home. The oldest and largest fireworks company in the United States, it stages more than 3,500 displays annually.
In Florida, the Zambellis have done fireworks for the Orange Bowl halftime shows, the Miami Dolphins, the Florida Marlins and the city of Boca Raton. Minor League baseball teams, such as the Jupiter Hammerheads, the Fort Myers Miracle and the Sarasota Red Sox, rely on Zambelli to entertain their fans. Each May, the company's fireworks are a popular addition to Sunfest, the huge, annual celebration of West Palm Beach.
Marcy Zambelli meets people from all over the world. Not long ago, after hearing a woman's distinct way of speaking, Marcy looked at her and said with certainty: "You're from Pittsburgh!" Yes, the woman told her, adding, "and you're a Zambelli!" Then the two women proceeded to discuss the topics that are always discussed when native Pittsburghers encounter each other far afield.
Speaking of a field, here's an invitation: "If you're a Steeler fan, and a Rooney fan, you need to come and see us." It comes from Norman Breslin, a native of Ireland and general manager of two of Rooney's Public House locations, one in West Palm Beach and the other in the Abacoa Town Center in Jupiter, a block from Roger Dean Stadium, the spring training home of the St. Louis Cardinals and the Montreal Expos. (A third Rooney location is at the Palm Beach International Airport.)
Owned by Pat Rooney, son of Art, the pubs blend the themes of the authentic Pittsburgh football fan and the traditional Irish pub.
"The history of the Rooney family is on the walls," Breslin says, adding in his Irish brogue, "and a fine family they are, too." The history of the Black and Gold is on display as well, including the huge Steelers banner that hangs most conspicuously above the bandstand at the Jupiter location. "It's a shrine to the Steelers."
In fact, Breslin says, "it's like walking into a cathedral."
Currently, four of the employees hail from the Pittsburgh area. "They feel as if they're right at home working here," says Breslin.
The live bands draw big crowds, as do Steeler games. "We'll have a raffle after every game," Breslin says. The raffles are a new idea for this season, with some memorabilia offered as prizes that will be as good as "gold dust" to Steeler fans, he says. Prizes will include items such as practice footballs and other souvenirs signed by players and coaches.
If the Rooney pubs seem like real Irish pubs, that's because they were Irish pubs before they were shipped, piece by piece, to the United States. "They were actually built lock, stock and barrel, in Dublin," says Breslin, "then transported over here and put back together." He knows, because he helped to reconstruct them in Florida.
Besides the pubs, the Rooney family has owned the Palm Beach Kennel Club since 1970. It features a track for year-round greyhound racing, as well as a 30-table poker room, simulcast wagering and various restaurants to choose from. Yearly attendance rates reach close to one million. Among the track's major annual events is the Arthur J. Rooney Sr. St. Pat's Invitational.
Another Pittsburgh name is becoming prominent in South Florida, this one associated with the innovation that put side dishes like French fries and cole slaw directly on the sandwich instead of beside it.
Since 1995, Eric Kozlowski, son of Claire and Harry Kozlowski of Baldwin, has helped to introduce South Florida to the Primanti Brothers' sandwich. Like Primanti's in the Strip District, the Fort Lauderdale restaurant is open 24 hours a day, every day. "We threw the keys in the ocean, and we've been open ever since," Kozlowski says of that day in 1995.
But unlike the Primanti Brothers' locations in Pittsburgh, this Primanti's offers an ocean view from the corner of N.E. Ninth Street and A1A in the heart of Fort Lauderdale.
With 50 percent ownership in the Florida restaurant, Kozlowski credits Jim Patrinos, president of Primanti Brothers restaurants in Pittsburgh, for giving him the chance to put Primanti's on the map in Florida.
"He trusted us to do it. It took a while, but we have a nice following," Kozlowski says. In fact, since the first year, business has almost tripled, he says, with gross annual sales now reaching $1.5 million.
Kozlowski's attitude is, "When in Florida, do as the Pittsburghers do." So, decorating the restaurant's front door are three WDVE window stickers. You can order an Iron City Beer (shipped in by train once a month), as advertised by a sign on the wall with the words I.C. Light superimposed over our own Golden Triangle.
The most impressive decoration of all, however, is a large Kennywood sign that hangs over the grill area. Eric's sister bought the sign for him at Kennywood's gift shop for $60. So what if the big yellow arrow we've all come to recognize points out toward the ocean? Pittsburghers still get it.
Dan Marino usually arrives in a limousine for his regular visits to the restaurant. On Steelers game days, says Kozlowski, "the place is packed."
No matter where you go in South Florida, there's always a chance you will run into a native Pittsburgher. At Primanti Brothers, as luck would have it, we met Joe Panarella, originally from Monessen, now living in Frederick, Md. "Every time we come down to Florida, we come in here," he tells us. Panarella discussed some mutual friends with Kozlowski, with a Pittsburgh accent, of course. Then the conversation turned to the Pirates, Steelers, and even Monessen native Michael Moorer. It felt like we were home -- until we heard the crashing of the waves.
Georgene Gallo and her son, Anthony Gallo Jr., are freelance writers based in Glenshaw.
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LeMont of the Palm Beaches, Northbridge Centre Building, 515 N. Flagler Drive, Suite 2000, West Palm Beach, FL 33401; 1-561-820-2442.