Former roomie and sometimes co-author Jack Silbert sent me a story about spiedies that ran in the New York Times this week. Spiedies are a regional food phenom centered primarily in the city of Binghamton, New York. Back in 1998, when I was freshly canned from a dot-com and freelancing full-time for the first time in my life, I pitched and sold a story on spiedies to a slick national food magazine. They paid for my travel upstate to investigate the history of New York’s version of meat-on-a-stick, to witness a spiedie grilling competition, and to lug back a case of spiedie sauce, which I lavished upon my editors in Manhattan. They paid me and my expenses quickly, but never ran the story. It languished for years. I moved on. Got married. Lived overseas. Occasionally prodded the editors from far-flung locales. The magazine had moved on, too. The EIC who had been so enthusiastic about the piece was kicked upstairs to dream up new magazine “initiatives.” No doubt annoyed by my frequent emails and calls, his minions finally limped into action. Voice oozing with schadenfreude, the interim managing editor called to say her chefs whipped up some spiedies in their test kitchen, and just didn’t see what the big deal was all about. (This is why freelancers scratch their eyes out.) The story was officially, mercilessly dead. Until now.

“They’re almost ready,” Anthony Iacovelli tells me, carefully spinning the skewers holding tiny cubes of lamb meat.

His grill, built by his father in the 1930s, gleams with red-hot coals. From a nearby cart, he grabs a bottle and christens the meat with its contents. A hiss, a whoosh, and the air is filled with lemon-scented smoke.

“Smell that!” my burly, well-tanned host commands me. “In the old days, people would smell the smoke and say, ‘What is that fragrance, that incense?’ But pretty soon, everyone knew: It’s a crazy chef cooking spiedies!” 

If I were anywhere else in the world, it would appear that Iacovelli is merely grilling up a bunch of shish-kebabs. But this is Binghamton, New York, about 150 miles north of New York City. Folks here don’t know from shish-kebabs—and don’t much care. Instead, everyone craves spiedies: cubes of intensely marinated meat, cooked on skewers and served in a slice of spongy white bread that sops up the cooked juices.

The day before, as I prowled Main Street, checking out fast-food joints selling skewered meat along with burgers and fries, people asked incredulously, “You never had a spiedie?”

But hey, I’m not alone in my ignorance. Despite attempts to bring spiedies (pronounced “SPEE-dees”) to the world, the skewered morsels are virtually unknown outside the handful of small towns surrounding Binghamton, a place natives call Bingoland, U.S.A.

Oh sure, every civilization has dabbled with meat-on-a-stick—hence Greek souvlaki, Japanese yakitori, and even Southeast Asian satay. Italians call them spiedini and lavish attention upon il sugo, the “juice” or infusion splashed over the meat when it’s cooked. But how did a simple Italian shish-kebab emigrate to the southern tier of New York and undergo such a bewildering Americanization?

The answer is shoes.

You heard me. Early in the 20th century, immigrants streaming off the boats at Ellis Island were heard to ask, “Which way E-J?” Thousands flocked upstate to the Endicott-Johnson factory, seeking shoe magnate George Johnson’s “Square Deal”—a job, a home, schools, and parks for their kids. By WWII, E-J Footwear employed 20,000 immigrants, mostly Italians, but also Poles, Czechs, and Slovaks. On weekends in the 1930s, Italian “shoe families” congregated in the company-built Northside Park, where Iacovelli’s father and uncle, Agostino and Camillo, two brothers from the Abruzzo region of Italy, grilled and sold spiedini. They dry-rubbed lamb meat in garlic and herbs, let it sit three days, and cooked it on a spit. Before removing it from the fire, they spritzed on il sugo, or “enzuzu,” as they pronounced the word in their Pescaran dialect.

Iacovelli, now 67 and a retired restauranteur, recalls selling spiedini as a kid, carrying as many as 10 skewers at time. “We sold one skewer for a dime,” he says. “Sometimes you’d get a guy who didn’t know how to eat a spiedie. He’d wrap the bread around the meat and pull up, and the top three chunks of meat would fall on the ground. It was funny!”

Aficionados know: you wrap the bread around the stick like a squishy baseball mitt, and pull the stick down. The meat stays in the bread, and the whole thing—eventually—ends up in your mouth.

Later vendors simply marinated the meat for three days in a sauce of their own concoction, skewered, cooked, and served it on baker Felix Roma’s white “Italian bread.” Today these American-style “spiedies” have entered the realm of gourmet sauces, websites, 800 numbers, and T-shirts. The local Wegman’s supermarket sells chicken, beef, pork and even the traditional lamb spiedies, all cubed and swimming in three, two, and one-pound marinade containers. Purists enjoy whipping up their own marinades, but average fans, even far-flung ones, rely on store-bought sauce brands like Lupo’s or Salamida’s.

“One night I was working late and got a call from someone in Alaska who wanted a case of sauce,” says Rob Salamida, who has sold about 5 million bottles of his Salamida’s Original State Fair Spiedie Sauce since he began bottling in 1975. Today his company sells two other spiedie varieties, and nearly 30 other marinades. “We ship all over the country, but it’s always because someone from Binghamton has moved to a new state and has told people about spiedies. Twelve miles out of Binghamton, no one would know what you’re talking about.”

Ask around town who makes the best spiedie and you’re liable to start an argument. Intense pride and rivalry seem hallmarks of the spiedie tradition. Vendors routinely sling around an odd bunch of “firsts.” Who sold the first chicken spiedie? (Lupo’s.) Who debuted Buffalo-style, Greek-style, and Caesar chicken spiedies? (The gleaming fast-food-style Spiedie & Rib Pit, of course.)

At Sharkey’s, the 51-year-old dimly lit joint where spittoons once huddled under the bar rail, the menu offers a choice of pork or chicken spiedies. Monday and Wednesday nights, you can savor 3 skewers and stack of bread for $3.95. “I’ve had guys come in and eat 20 spiedies at a time,” says Larry Sharak, 53, who presides over Sharkey’s with his sister-in-law Marie, and nephew Chris. “The pork spiedie is really the best. Chicken is just the health-conscious thing.”

In such a small community, the business can get pretty competitive—and downright nasty. Witness the “spiedie wars” touched off in 1993 between two factions of the city’s biggest spiedie royal family. Brothers Sam and Stephen Lupo, owners of Lupo’s Deli and Lupo’s S&S Char-Pit, filed an injunction against their cousin, Susan, and her husband John Schofield, claiming the Schofields had infringed upon their name and trademarks by opening Lupo’s Spiedie & Rib Pit. Sam Lupo says it was his and his brother’s hard work in the 1980s that made the Lupo’s name synonymous with spiedies. In the end, Susan dropped her name from her family’s three restaurants. To this day her “logo” is a black bar that covers the family name. For a while, she and her husband John ran radio ads which omitted the name in a way that mocked the suit, urging listeners to head over to “[BEEP] Spiedie and Rib Pit.”

Luckily, though, all the rivalries have a creative outlet: Binghamton’s annual Spiedie Fest Cooking Contest. The morning of the recent contest, as thousands of fair-goers wander among the striped tents pitched at a local airport, thirty-three cooks stake out their grill spots for the competition. They’re a mix of amateur backyard chefs, spiedie vendors, and local celebs: A shirtless radio DJ. A blue-eyed 4th-grader and her mom. The burly “Grill Bros.” And two gents nicknamed Spike and Muso. Families and friends cheer from lawn chairs on the sidelines, making the contest feel like a cross between a tailgate party and a boxing match. From the opening signal—“Get ready, get set, start your grills!”—tensions run high. The flimsy contest grills ignite poorly, sending folks scrambling for more charcoal. The rival Lupos chat icily as they fan their briquettes. Chris Sharak shakes his head as he attempts to cook Sharkey’s famous pork spiedies over an uncooperative flame.

The whole thing appalls me. I wander over and pepper the judges with questions. How fair can it be to force people who normally cook and serve their food in industrial kitchens to cook on three-dollar grills from Kmart? Chef Jack Yevchak, leader of the contest’s 19 judges, is unmoved. “Sure, it’s tough,” he growls, “but they’re all on equal footing here.”

Just then, a shout goes up: “Pork! We need a pork judge!” Yevchak excuses himself and dashes off.

The morning wears on, endlessly but deliciously. When the judges finish tasting, I weasel my way past a few of the town mayors and fold some chunks of meat into a slice of Roma bread, the locals’ bread of choice. In this way I gobble pesto-mint spiedies, Polynesian pork spiedies, honey-dijon and Tandoori chicken spiedies. Some are admittedly dry, but others are so juicy that they soak the soft bread with flavor. When the smoke clears, the chicken spiedies cooked by Celine Hughes of Endicott, take first place in the amateur round.

Though the 63-year-old grandmother took first place once before, in 1992, she shyly dismisses her win today. “I don’t really like to cook,” she confesses. “People always think I have a restaurant, but I just like the spiedies.”

Meanwhile, in the restaurant round, Sharkey’s pork spiedies skewer the competition. Both Lupo factions slink away quietly as Larry Sharak beams. “I’m gonna call the radio stations tonight and tell them,” he says. “From now on, they can say Sharkey’s makes the best spiedie in town.”

I ask him: Will he and his family be feasting on spiedies tonight? “No,” laughs Sharak. “Lobster tail and steak!”

Cute little story, right? Here’s what’s funny: that story represents the state-of-the-spiedie, 1998. The new piece in the New York Times reveals that much has changed in Bingoland, 2023. Sharkey’s and one of the Lupo’s eateries are gone. Salamida’s lives on. Never saw that coming. While poking around the internet, however, I discovered that the very magazine that canned my story back in 2000 ended up running a different story on spiedies about a decade later. Not gonna link to it. Let them flog their own meat.

Grill photo at top by me.