By Victor Greto
WILMINGTON — There’s something so Italian about Bernie Malloy.
No, not his Irish surname — the water ice and pizza he serves (“ice and a slice”), as well as the neighborhood around 8th and DuPont streets in Little Italy where he has served them for a quarter of a century.
And his two grandmothers, both of whom were as Italian as the lemon ice that people of his generation — he’s 53 now — grew up getting headaches with because they ate them too fast in the heat.
Back then, buying Italian water ice — a version of a grainy Italian dessert called granita — was like buying a ubiquitous black Ford Model T in the early 1920s: you could have any flavor as long as it was lemon.
It’s arguably still one of the best flavors, but a quarter century of experience has taught Malloy that thriving in a business is all about variety.
“Lemon might still be my favorite,” Malloy said during a humid rush hour last week. “When I first got here, that was it, just lemon. Now, we have 92 different versions.”
Not all at once, though. They are rotated out, so one time the store may have a dozen flavors available, including some of the newer ones.
Green tea. Pomegranate. Green apple. Cranberry.
You can see the old-timers rolling their eyes.
But that’s neither here nor there to Teal Moore, who works as a pharmacy technician cater-corner to Bernie’s at St. Francis Hospital. She was spooning in her mouth a blue raspberry-and-banana water ice (small, $1.50).
“I should have gotten sugar free,” she said, an option for several popular flavors.
Not because she’s diabetic or because she needs to lose weight — she needs to do neither — but because of recent gastric bypass surgery.
“I always get two flavors together,” she said, and she gets them at least three times a week when Bernie’s is open, from late March through October.
It’s Moore’s favorite summer treat, much more than, say, that other season perennial, ice cream.
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Nearly three decades ago, Malloy was looking for a business to get into.
“My uncle had bought the machine I started with, and he made water ice and went around to ballparks,” Malloy said.
But his uncle lost interest, and the machine sat in the family basement. His uncle showed Malloy how it was done.
“I was making water ice in the basement and taking it to family parties, trying to decide if it was going to be something I wanted to do,” he said.
A little more than 25 years ago, 1701 W. 8th St. was for rent.
“I stumbled across this location, saw the door open, stopped in, and found out a young lady had just bought the building and was looking for a tenant,” Malloy recalled.
It was the perfect area for Italian water ice, he thought, despite the fact there were four other places within walking distance.
“I was still convinced I should be close to Little Italy,” he said.
There are only two other places within walking distance now.
Several of the customers who sidled up to Bernie’s curbside window (only employees are allowed inside) last week, said they had grown up either in the neighborhood, or had friends who lived here.
Doreen Muhammad grew up here, but left two decades ago.
“I remember coming here,” she said, “but this is the first time I’ve been back in 20 years.”
Her flavor? “Always mango.”
Tiffany Jones, a mail carrier subbing for another carrier on a route that goes by Bernie’s, said she came here a lot when she was younger because she had friends who lived nearby.
She loves green apple.
“They’re cool, especially for mail carriers,” she said. “Not heavy.” Like ice cream, she means.
Curiously enough, great water ice is made in the same sort of machine ice cream is.
“The equipment has evolved, but the recipe is the same: sugar, water, flavor extract,” Malloy said. “Put all of it into an ice cream maker. But there’s no dairy.”
Which is easier on the stomach.
For potential stomach aches, you can have the second half of what Malloy sells: pizza (double slice of pizza, $2.75, with pepperoni, $3.50).
He didn’t start selling pizza till three years after he opened his place.
“I thought we needed to have something else,” he said. “Everyone else was doing pretzels, but it was a hassle.”
Back then, you had to go to Philadelphia to get them. “Then I thought, ‘Everyone likes pizza.’”
As popular as his pizza (and his prices) are, his shop remains seasonal.
“I’ve thought about doing just pizza in winter, and we tried it once,” Malloy said. “But because there’s no inside, and it gets cold, people are less inclined to pull up and stand outside.”
Besides, Bernie’s in Little Italy goes with the heat.
He’s got more than a dozen kids who work or him part-time, up to four at a time.
“The kids have a blast working here,” he said. “Even when it gets hot and busy.”
Especially when it gets hot and busy.
And who can blame them?
No school, and free pizza and water ice.