Pickle sandwiches and mozzarella towers: How 3 Long Island restaurants rode TikTok's viral wave 

The line for pickle sandwiches starts at the entrance, a corridor filled with black-and-white photos illustrating 50 years of New York deli history. Seven Brothers Gourmet Food Market is barely noticeable from the street, but that didn’t stop hordes of customers from descending onto the Oceanside shop this past summer. The family behind the Italian grocery store had to create a separate line for their TikTok-famous sandwich, which ditches the bread for a large hollowed-out pickle.

On a recent afternoon, the rush had already cleared out and the empty line gave off a deserted amusement park vibe. Still, Sandro Fiorito stood ready to prepare 150 different sandwich varieties, with or without bread. After he took the order — one Dill’icious Discount combo with a classic pickle sandwich, dill pickle potato chips and a Hal’s seltzer for $14.99 — he worked quickly.

Grabbing one of the hollowed-out pickle boats from a trough on the counter, Sandro stuffed it with roast turkey, provolone, lettuce and bacon. Without being prompted, he cut the sandwich in half and displayed the cross-section so it could be properly photographed. He had a proud look on his face, a little smirk that seeped out the edges of his mouth.

Sandro is one of the original seven brothers (and six sisters) who helped open the first location of the deli in Woodhaven, Queens, in 1972. Its main founder, Antonio Fiorito, passed away in 2021, and now the Oceanside market is run by Sandro and his sister Maria Taurino, as well as Antonio’s sons Anthony and Joseph Fiorito.

It looked like any other Italian market, aside from the parking lot patio, where three 20-something women were eating their pickle sandwiches, struggling to keep the pickle juices from squirting out. The combination of savory and sour flavors is tastier than you’d think, but the sandwich can be a little messy. If you do have a clothing emergency, you can buy a $20 souvenir shirt that says, "We are kind of a big dill."

Seven Brothers didn’t invent the pickle sandwich, but they’d been serving it for a few months after one of their employees saw it on Pinterest, said Anthony. Then in May, Gabby Palmigiano (a.k.a @gabbyparmesan), a pickle-loving sister of one of their cashiers, created a viral TikTok video that inspired other social media influencers to jump on the trend.

"Thank God we didn’t run out of pickles," Fiorito said. "Every day, we were selling more and more and more. We went from like 70 to 100, to 200, to 300. Then it was 500 a day. It was insanity." The family had to hire two or three extra workers to handle the lines; the wait could last as long as one and a half to two hours. And some family members were working 15 or 16 hours a day. Fiorito’s wife, who was nine months pregnant at the time, was not having any of this pickle business and was beginning to get ticked off about the whole thing, he continued. "It felt like riding a bull," added his brother, Joseph.

Even so, the business didn’t really make that much money off the pickle endeavor because it was underpriced to begin with. Still, Fiorito likened the experience to winning the lottery. The sensation brought new faces, some people from the neighborhood who had been overlooking the shop for years. And others from an hour away, even from different states. Despite being a traditional Italian guy, their dad would have been overwhelmed with pickle enthusiasm, he said. "Forget about it. He would have been so excited. Seeing all these people in the store, he would have went crazy ... in a good way."

There are a few reasons that foods go viral. The pickle sandwich for instance, is low in carbs and possesses a certain quirky, crunchy appeal. Other foods just look so compelling, social media scrollers think they need them.

STUFFED BAGELS

That describes the stuffed bagel at The Everything Bagel in Commack. (As of this writing, another location is scheduled to come soon to Dix Hills.) You might say it’s all about the "cheese pull," but we’re talking cream cheese here, so it’s not really a pull but more of a smoosh. The hot cream cheese oozed out of the garlicky bagel from several directions while Melina Roussos (a.k.a. @yourfoodieprincess) attempted to eat it on video in her car.

"Hey besties, I have been seeing these stuffed bagels all over TikTok and I have been dying to try one, but they’re literally nowhere on Long Island," she said in her May 29 Instagram video. "You guys need to try this. I don’t care where you live on Long Island, you need to make the drive." As it turns out, Roussos is Everything Bagel’s social media manager, and the reason for this particular bagel’s existence.

The idea of cutting diagonal slits into a bagel, piping cream cheese into them, then dipping the bagel into garlic butter before popping it back into the oven was first developed in 2021 by a Los Angeles shop, Calic Bagel. But Roussos had been seeing it all over social media and begged manager Vicky Lima to start serving them. Business was already good, so months passed before she finally agreed.

Shortly after a pair of promotional videos went live, Everything Bagel got slammed. And over the past few months, the heavy crowd has remained steady. On weekends, an assistant manager stands in the corner waiting for stuffed bagels to come in, then prepares them to order, chopping garlic and crowning the bagels with a growing selection of toppings: Philly cheesesteak, Nutella, a bacon-egg-and-cheese.

"I joke all the time, I’m like, you guys definitely hate me," she said about Everything Bagel’s regular staff. "Whenever I come in to shoot content, they’re like ‘Oh God, what is she doing now?’ But they have fun with it." She noted that the online feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. But she does suspect some longtime customers are probably annoyed, especially when they just want their bagel and coffee and discover a line that stretches into the parking lot. The stuffed bagels here are undeniably indulgent but the pure caloric content of it all, and the grease they leave all over your hands, put them into the "you’ve gotta try it just once" category. Because the trend is so new, it’ll be interesting to see whether Everything Bagel will be able turn all these first-time customers into regulars.

MOZZARELLA STICK TOWERS

So how does a business translate a viral moment into lasting success, anyway? Look to Robkes, the second-generation Italian restaurant that’s become a neighborhood favorite in Northport. The building on Fort Salonga Road is especially busy during lunch, even though it’s cash-only. Looking around the room at the crowd of revelers ordering from the specials board and drinking various shades of red and pink cocktails, you’d have no idea this all stemmed from a social media moment.

Robkes, in business serving American fare since 1961, was purchased in 1978 by Louis Selvaggio Sr., who gradually began to incorporate the New York Italian foods he served at his other restaurant in the Bronx. Sitting on the outer patio that pushes into the parking lot, his son and co-owner Louie ("Sel") Selvaggio said the restaurant flew under the radar until 2016, when a random experiment turned into a series of viral posts on Facebook and YouTube. He had been in the cramped kitchen one day with social media strategist Salvatore DiBenedetto (a.k.a. @thegrubfather) and the two decided to stack orders of fried mozzarella on top of each other to make a tower.

"In our opinion, it was pretty dumb. All it was, was fried mozzarel’ that we’ve made here for a hundred years," he said. "We cut into it and did this thing, and the cheese just kept going, and the video went crazy .… When I tell you, we had a line to Stop & Shop."

From that day on, the dynamic of the restaurant changed, and suddenly there was a younger clientele. But it wasn’t as peachy as it seemed. The restaurant’s fryer became so overworked, it went on the fritz. And the kitchen was so busy it was difficult to maintain quality and consistency. Two dishes would come out looking great, and one would come out looking terrible, Selvaggio said. Eventually, they decided the original fried mozzarella with only two pieces was the superior dish, and they took the tower off the menu completely.

No matter. Since then, Robkes has had a few other social media moments, which grew the business further each time. The signature dish, the Pork Chop Martini, spawned a series of copycats last year when Selvaggio put out a video from his personal Instagram account that racked up nearly 15,000 likes. (The Pork Chop Martini is not a cocktail, by the way, but a breaded pork chop in a lemony sauce.)

Then there was the time when Long Island diners took to posting about Robkes in the Facebook group Tri-State Restaurant Club. "You might think you’re doing yourself a favor and you might get an overload of people. But that could really hurt you," he said. "People are waiting two, two and a half hours to sit on a Friday night. We’re telling people ‘No coffee, no dessert’ anymore ... Every weekend was a nightmare here."

But Selvaggio is generally positive about marketing on Instagram, which he leaves to his sister Mia Dawn Selvaggio and her social media marketing company, The Amici Group. Business has been so good that the two of them opened a sister spot, Birdie Bar, down the street in 2023. Their social media posts are successful, he said, because they seem real, rather than promotional, to people. They’re just highlighting their specials, showing a little behind-the-scenes kitchen action and sticking to what works for them.

"I’ve been working here for 20 years. These people have watched me wait on them since I was a kid, a baby," Selvaggio added. "So now when you see me [in a video] in front of the place, hyping tomorrow’s special — these Northport people, they know it’s coming from me and our place, and they trust us, and they look forward to it."

Sitting down to lunch on a recent afternoon, it is easy to see why this place has remained popular for so many decades. The mozzarella tower is nowhere to be found, but the pork chop martini is an amazing dish. After pounding, the pork chop was still thick, and the breading had softened under the assertive lemony sauce. Digging under the Parm, your fork will uncover cloves of roasted garlic and spicy cherry tomatoes. The pork chop martini tastes like a classic, but, as the kids would say, it slaps.

By Andi Berlin

andi.berlin@newsday.comAndiBerlin

Andi Berlin is from Arizona and does not know where she is going. But when she gets there, she’ll find something beautiful and delicious that the world needs to taste.