Deli-cious Jazz Served Sundays in Tustin

Monday through Saturday the thin strip of grass in front of the San Remo Italian Market in Tustin looks like nothing more than a planter for a pair of spreading sycamore trees. But on most Sundays it becomes the airiest jazz club in Orange County.

It’s then that Joe Massimino, co-owner of the market, breaks out his electric piano, calls in a few of his musical colleagues and holds an afternoon-long jazz jam session, alfresco and free.

Jazz-at-the-deli, a more or less regular Sunday afternoon event, is perhaps the most visible way Massimino manages to combine the two great passions of his life: music and food.

His Own Best Ad

Physically, he is a good advertisement for both pursuits. Short of stature and round of middle, Massimino obviously loves to eat. But his pudgy hands, which look more at home hovering over a forkful of fettucine Alfredo than running over a keyboard, serve him well at the piano. Reportedly, he’s one of the best jazz pianists in Southern California.

A sideman with the Tommy Dorsey band in the 1950s, Massimino later became musical director for “The Merv Griffin Show.” During his 15-year tenure with Griffin, he not only led the show’s band, he also frequently cooked with such celebrity chefs as Julia Child and James Beard, on the air. When the show folded, Massimino decided to “put my musical career on the back 40 for a while and go to something else I knew about: food.”

Massimino’s answer was the San Remo Italian Market. With his partner, Don DeSimone (a former trumpet player), Massimino dispenses fresh pasta, a variety of sauces, Italian wines and other specialties, and runs a takeout deli specializing in homemade Italian sausage.

The smell inside the market, more fragrant the closer one comes to the deli counter, is of sausage being cooked by DeSimone. Often, during breaks in the music, the crowd on the lawn chairs repairs inside for a bottle of flavored seltzer or perhaps a meatball sandwich or one of the many salads displayed in the deli case.

Massimino, who is proud of his own cooking skills, says the deli also is known for its Chicken Marsala and a second chicken dish inspired by a friend, and cooked on catering jobs, called Chicken Volla Distano.

Excitement, Culture

On Sunday, however, most of the customers are outside the market, in lawn chairs or leaning on parked cars, listening to the owner dispense jazz. Massimino, who says they’re “trying to put a little excitement and culture in the City of Tustin,” is usually joined by what he calls “a nucleus of guys who are almost always here, musician friends of mine from L.A.” The guys, he adds, “are real professionals. They don’t (usually) play for kicks. They play for money.”

“It’s a ball,” said Karen Gallinger, a jazz singer from Garden Grove who sat in with the band on a recent Sunday. “These are the best players around. . . . “

Massimino estimates that between 50 and 150 people show up on any Sunday, weather and Massimino’s schedule permitting. Some are amateur musicians who come to sit in (“Anybody who can hold a horn and isn’t embarrassed to sit in with us is welcome here”) while others are neighborhood regulars. Others are motorists who pass by on busy Newport Avenue and, taken with the streetside scene, park the car, stroll over and listen.

“Everybody knows everybody else here,” said Mary Jane Stephens, a regular who lives three blocks from the market. “We’re all a family now. It’s an absolute Sunday must. . . . “

San Remo Italian Market, 13682 Newport Ave., Tustin, (714) 669-0752.