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Health & Fitness

Rex's Tomato Pies

Uncle Freddie made a mean pie way back when. . .

Some of the best times I had when I was a little kid growing up on the Jersey Shore was when I visited Uncle Freddie and Aunt Fannie at their Italian restaurant on South Broadway. 

Rex’s Tomato Pies was situated right about where the entrance to the Oceanplace Resort & Spa in Long Branch is today. South Broadway extended from where Broadway split into North and South Broadway all the way to Ocean Avenue back then, and my aunt and uncle’s restaurant was smack dab in the middle of the row of businesses along that portion of the street. 

My mom used to drive my brother Joe and I there to hang out and grab a bite to eat. Little Grandma (my mother’s mom) was a waitress there back in the day. She didn’t drive, so a lot of times, we’d wind up taking her home with us after she got off of work. 

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The restaurant reminded me of the pizza parlors in Brooklyn as portrayed in the move “The Godfather”, especially the one where Michael Corleone shoots the rival gang’s leader along with the dirty police captain. The tables were long and spaced out evenly within the restaurant, with patterned table cloths and comfortable chairs with the sponge cushions. The ceilings were high, and the smell of garlic and parmesan hit you like a ton of bricks when you walked in. You truly felt like you were in New York whenever you went there to eat. 

The bathrooms were off to one side of the restaurant, and there was one of the old-time pay telephones located right by the bathroom entrance.  

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My uncle ran the kitchen while the rest of the family performed the other duties. Aunt Fannie (Little Grandma’s big sister) handled the cash register, a couple of the daughters waited on tables with Little Grandma, and cousin Sonny helped out Uncle Freddie in the kitchen. 

The place didn’t have a liquor license, so it was BYOB. Every time I came into the place with mom, I’d always see the same faces sitting at the same tables scattered with new customers here and there. My uncle’s place did a phenomenal lunch and dinner business. 

Around the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, when my aunt and uncle were getting ready to retire, there was nobody left in the family who could take over the business. The female cousins either all got married or went to work elsewhere full-time, and cousin Sonny went off to be the head chef at a camp in Pennsylvania. 

Right around then, most of the businesses along North Broadway had dried up and went away.  Then redevelopment hit that area of Long Branch. All the buildings along North Broadway were demolished to make way for the Oceanplace Hilton. The beginning of the revitalization of the Long Branch oceanfront had begun. 

(The entire Jersey Shore Retro Blogography can be found at http://longbranch.patch.com/blogs/kevin-cieris-blog. You can also follow Kevin Cieri's blog on his Facebook page, "Jersey Shore Retro" as well as on Twitter @jsretro).

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