DiMaio’s is an unassuming kind of place, one you might drive past or not give much of a second thought to if you were in the strip mall shopping for something else, say, like a pair of pliers at the hardware store. After all, it’s a family-owned pizzeria and restaurant, and you know what to expect—a modest-sized dining room with basic furniture, a large menu with lots of different pizzas and pasta dishes, garlic knots at the ready. Well, yes and no.
DiMaio’s does indeed present all of these things upon first glance. “We are a pizzeria restaurant; we are not fancy,” says Anna, who runs the place with her mother, Maria, and sisters Rosaria and Daniela. Everyone pitches in—you can find Anna doing the hiring, scheduling and ordering, but also in the kitchen, cooking, too, and greeting customers. Maria cooks on the weekends, and Anna’s sisters are responsible for kitchen prep.
But don’t let appearances fool you. Yes, DiMaio’s serves good food, done well, without much fuss or fanfare, but it’s also more than what you would expect. All the sauces are made from scratch and the entrées—should you order one—are made to order. There’s no reheating going on here—even things such as calzones and pepperoni bread are prepared when you order them and not simply reheated after sitting out all day. The bread they use for sandwiches and with entrées is made daily in house. It features a crisp crust and a softish crumb, but “it’s not Italian bread,” she says. (Nor should it be, as it has to multitask and serve various purposes.) There’s no semolina in the bread here. Pizza dough is made from scratch, too—that’s fairly typical for pizza joints. You can see where this is going, maybe—DiMaio’s is also the type of place whose “pizza guy,” as Anna calls him, worked there for almost 30 years until he retired two years ago.
The family moved to Pennsylvania from New Jersey and, as Anna tells it, she grew up in the restaurant biz. DiMaio’s has been in the same Hellertown location since 1985, with an expansion in 2002 that took over an empty storefront next door and brought up their capacity to 24 tables—or about 96 people, with about a half dozen outside tables during good weather. Her family ran a restaurant of the same name back in Berkeley Heights, where she’s originally from (it’s still there, but someone else owns it now and has changed the menu). And just to show how rooted the family is here in the Lehigh Valley, Anna’s brother Tony runs Gio Italian Grill in Macungie. “It just got into our blood,” she says.
Daniela Caiazzo, Maria DiMaio, Anna DiMaio Luongo, and Rosaria Silva
The fact that the DiMaio family has New York City metro-area roots assures us that their classic Neapolitan pizza is New York-style with a thin crust: You have to be able to hold the slice horizontally and it has to stay that way. You also have to be able to fold it in half down the middle without it collapsing, and walk across the street with it. Those are some of the unwritten rules of New York-style pizza. So far as one can tell, DiMaio’s holds up. “People tell us, because we are closed on Sundays, ‘Oh, we were forced to order Papa John’s,’ and I say, ‘No one is forcing you! Just wait until we are open!’” Anna laughs.
Speaking of pizza, lately DiMaio’s has been doing a brisk business with Nonna Pizza, their version of grandma pie. It’s typically a square pizza with cheese on the bottom and sauce on the top. But make no mistake, this isn’t a Sicilian pizza served inside out or upside down (also see: Colonial Pizza in Easton). You see it on some menus around here, but according to Anna, “it’s more common in New York and New Jersey.” They use the same dough for all their pizza types, but they don’t let the dough rise as much for this one. So you get a thin crust, 15-inch square pizza, which you can order by the pie or the “cut”—you get nine square cuts per pizza. It’s a well-balanced combination of their sauce, which isn’t too sweet, Romano cheese and oregano. “I think 99 out of 100 people have really liked this pizza when they’ve tried it,” she says. It’s a more time-consuming bake, because the cheese and the sauce are added in separate steps. “It was a little longer when we first started making it in the summer, but now people can expect it to take about 20 minutes,” she says.
(Just to momentarily confuse matters, DiMaio’s also makes the regional specialty known as tomato pie, which they make in a round shape with tomato sauce, “a tiny bit of Romano” and oregano, she says. It’s not as big of a seller.)
DiMaio’s will feed you more than just pizza, and with 31 years in business, they’ve definitely developed a loyal following. “The chicken Francese is one of our most popular dishes,” Anna says. Nothing has changed in the method or ingredients—flour, egg batter, lemon and white wine—over the years. “It’s not pounded super thin, like how other places do it. But you can break it with a fork, it’s so tender,” she says. Maria cuts the chicken right off the breast. Other hits include their version of saltimbocca, called Chicken DiMaio, which they make with spinach and ham instead of prosciutto. “It’s very simple, but has so much flavor,” she says. (It’s also available with shrimp or veal.) You could say the same about their seafood fra diavolo, too. DiMaio’s is also known for its white cream clam sauce—baby clams served over creamy linguine. “It’s rich and kind of an older dish, but people still order it,” she says.
Another specialty is their stracciatella soup, which contains a secret ingredient, along with egg, chicken broth, spinach and Romano cheese. It may sound unusual; the ingredients all get whisked together and then dropped into boiling water, forming the little shreds of ingredients for which it is named. “We won an award for it at the Sands Souper Bowl,” she says. It’s light but filling. “It became so popular that we had to put it on the menu all year round. My mother used to make it for us when we were kids, if we were sick or it was cold out,” she says.
It’s clear there’s pride in what DiMaio’s puts forth on a daily basis (except for Sunday—“we all need rest!”), all across the board, but pizza gets special love. “I would die if I had to give up pizza,” she says.
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DiMaio’s Ristorante and Pizzeria
27 Main St., Hellertown | 610.838.8004 | dimaios.net
Reservations:
Accepted for parties of six or more people
Parking:
An entire shopping center’s worth of spots
Payment Accepted:
Visa, MasterCard—“and cash!”
What to Order:
Every day, Maria makes the house soup—stracciatella. In the winter, there’s a second soup. Pizza is always a winner and the Nonna’s Pizza, a square, thin-crust version with cheese on the bottom and sauce on top, is a delicious addition to the menu in the past year. People also reportedly order sides of their meatballs to go regularly—they are about the size of a baseball, baked and fork tender. You can’t miss some of the entrées, especially the chicken Francese, the seafood fra diavolo and the house version of saltimbocca—they use ham instead of prosciutto, and you can have it with veal or chicken.
Other info:
DiMaio’s is BYOB, and the restaurant doesn’t charge a corkage fee. They will open and pour your wine for you.
