A restaurant with the unlikely name of God Bless Broccoli could not help but attract my attention. It turned out to be a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria in the Belleville neighborhood. In spite of the mention of the green vegetable of the cabbage family in its name, however, the restaurant is not vegan or even vegetarian, although broccoli and many other vegetables do make an appearance on the menu. It is, however, organic, preservative- and additive-free, and mostly locavore.
God Bless Broccoli is the fief of Giuseppe Romani, a native of Calabria who takes great pride in the quality and origins of the ingredients he uses and is always prepared to offer a short history of them. He explained to us, for example, that the lovely and inexpensive wine we had ordered, Cantine De Luca’s organic Gocce di Marinelli white from Calabria, was primarily made with Greco Blanco grapes, probably originally imported from Greece long ago.
