Massi Co & The Whelk's Massimo Tulio's Immigrant Song

National Immigrant Heritage Month is observed throughout the entire month of June.

It started with a scream.

A blood-curdling, top-of-the-lungs scream.

There in the garage window was the face of the next-door neighbor, the head of the cheerleading squad. Pale. Tear-streaked. Gasping for breath between shrieks. Blood was everywhere.

It looked like a total slaughter.

The way Massimo remembers it, it must have been around Easter.

“Yeah, it was close to Easter, and one time we were slaughtering a lamb and killing some rabbits. I think she had been taking out the garbage and decided to peek into our garage.”

What she saw sent her into a panic. The family had to explain exactly what they were doing. By the next day, the entire school knew about it.

Massimo remembers that day, and plenty of others from his childhood in New Canaan, Connecticut.

But let’s not beat a dead horse. Or a lamb. God forbid, a rabbit.

His mother always packed his school lunches. Elementary school, middle school—it didn’t matter. There was usually mortadella or soppressata tucked inside some rustic Italian bread. And yes, believe it or not, there were Nutella sandwiches long before most Americans knew what Nutella was.

Massimo remembers hiding in the corner of the cafeteria. He didn’t want anyone to see what he was eating.

The other kids had white bread. Processed cheese. Lunch boxes filled with foods that seemed as foreign to him as his lunch appeared to them.

Then one day a kid asked if he wanted to trade sandwiches.

Massimo swapped his mortadella for a ham-and-cheese sandwich.

“I thought, this is the grossest thing in the world.”

Another time he traded his Nutella sandwich for a peanut butter and jelly.

The rest is history.

Soon everybody wanted to exchange lunches, compare sandwiches, share a piece of what they had brought from home. But Massimo wanted no part of their peanut butter sandwiches.

Conceived in Naples, carried across the Atlantic in his mother’s womb, and born on September 28, 1976, in Norwalk, Connecticut, Massimo was raised in nearby New Canaan by immigrant parents who brought the traditions of southern Italy with them.

Like so many immigrant families, they arrived with little more than determination and a vision of a better life.

His father worked as a plumber and landscaper before eventually joining the local school system. From an early age, Massimo and his brothers worked alongside him, learning the value of labor and earning money by helping out.

His mother cleaned houses.

To this day, she still cleans three of the same homes she began cleaning nearly fifty years ago.

Ask her about those years and she’ll tell you stories of keeping three boys in a playpen while she vacuumed, dusted, and cooked meals in other people’s kitchens. Sometimes she prepared food there that would later be served to her own family that evening.

Imagine growing up in a household in New Canaan where you made your own wine, packed your own sausages, and slaughtered your own animals.

For the Tullio family, it was ordinary life.

Everything revolved around food.

In this Italian household, every meal was connected to the next one. Even while eating dinner, somebody was already talking about lunch tomorrow or Sunday supper next week.

Food wasn’t just nourishment.

It was identity.

It was culture.

It was love.

The family owned the apartment next door in what was essentially a two-family house.  His mother was always cooking extra lasagna, extra pasta, extra chicken. Whatever was on the stove, there was always enough for one more person.

She’d step onto the shared back porch and invite the neighbors to join them.

And if you repeatedly declined?

“She’d be like, ‘All right, I’m not renewing your lease next year. You’ve got to break bread with us. You have to.’”

It was only half a joke.

Food was how they welcomed people.

Food was how they built community.

Food was how strangers became neighbors and neighbors became family.

Those lessons stayed with him.

The son of immigrants who arrived with little more than hope and determination learned early that hospitality isn’t something you perform. It’s something you practice.

The same boy who once traded sandwiches with strangers eventually learned that sharing food often becomes the first step toward friendship.

Today, as the owner of The Whelk and Massi. Co, those childhood lessons remain at the center of everything he does.

His roots are steeped in the immigrant tradition of gathering people together, pulling up another chair, pouring another glass of wine, and finding room at the table for one more guest.

When asked what he wants people to feel when they enter his restaurant, his answer has very little to do with food.

“It’s always about having people over. It’s a feeling. To me, it’s always been a feeling of being hugged. You know when a relative hugs you for three seconds—or maybe thirty seconds? That’s how you should feel when you walk into my house. That’s how you should feel when you walk into my restaurant.”

“We’ve got you. We’ll take care of you.”

“You might not appreciate the food. You might not like the music. But once you give in, you’re going to feel it. You’re going to feel the love and the caring.”

“We’re a community.”

“We scream and yell at each other sometimes, just like an Italian household. But in the end, we love each other. You leave, you hug, you kiss, and it takes twenty minutes to say goodbye.”

“That’s what I want.”

“Yeah. That’s what I really want.”

And maybe that’s what most of us want.

Not perfection.

Not agreement.

Just a seat at the table.

A place where someone is happy to see us.

A place where the food keeps coming, the conversation lingers, and nobody is in a hurry to say goodbye.

Massi, whether you like it or not, I’ve still got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich waiting for you.

And I love ya.