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Tripodi's Delicatessen
Tripodi's Delicatessen and Restaurant opened at University Mall on December 8, 1982. It offered Italian, Jewish and German food. Tripodi's was styled after the old corner New York City delicatessen. Among the items they made fresh daily were bagels, danishes, coffee cakes, turnovers, cream puffs, Italian flat breads, rolls, sausage, sauces, pasta and meatballs, cheesecakes, chocolate cakes, lemon cakes, carrot cakes, coconut cakes, Boston cream pies, sour cream choc squares, lemon squares, éclairs, cream horns, and a wide variety of cookies.
Tripodi's Delicatessen at University Mall in Chapel Hill
One of the most popular items on the menu was their Saucey Heel, a half loaf of Italian bread hollowed out and stuffed with two homemade meatballs and cheese, smothered in Tripodi's homemade Italian sauce. Other favorites included their Reuben sandwich, potato pancakes, and omelets.
Tripodi's Deli second location on Franklin Street
Dean Smith was a regular at Tripodi's as were most of his coaching staff including Bill Guthridge and Roy Williams. UNC football coach Dick Crum had a good luck table he would sit at on Fridays before a home game. He would have a slice of carrot cake with his meal.
Chapel Hill resident and big-band leader Kay Kyser, a regular customer at Tripodi's Deli
Billy Carmichael was a regular and when the place was full he would come in the kitchen and sit at the baking table and have his favorite meatball and bacon in a dish. Legendary Big Band leader Kay Kyser would come in for a late afternoon lunch and listen to music from the 1940's that the restaurant would play in his honor. The man who designed most of modern Chapel Hill, Joe Hakan, always fantasized about being a short order cook and gave it a try one day at Tripodi's.
Entrance of Tripodi's Deli at University Mall in Chapel Hill
Tripodi's also opened a little bistro on Franklin Street.
Comments:
Frances Thomas
9:10 PM Fri 8/5/2011
I worked at Tripodi's in 1985 part-time. Patty & Paul Tripodi were great people to work & excellent at teaching their workers an excellent work ethic. They believed strongly in treating every customer right & those who worked for them were expected to do the same... keep cups & glasses refilled and always be courteous. I wish that more restaurant owners today would train their employees that way.
Steve Nicewarner
7:44 PM Sat 4/17/2010
I'm pretty certain the Chapel Hill location was in Franklin Center -- 128 E Franklin St. We [Cerebral Hobbies] were a later tenant in the space and I will probably never forget that front facade or that tile, which was still there in 1994 when we moved in.
Eric Englebardt
4:44 PM Sat 1/30/2010
I worked making sandwiches there for a year while I was in school. I miss it every time I drive past there. Great food, nice people.
Tracy Smith
9:42 AM Thu 12/31/2009
Wow, it would be incredible to have a real Deli on the main part Franklin Street today. I think the city should help subsidize the incredibly high downtown rents if businesses like this would locate downtown.
D Rogers
8:42 PM Wed 12/30/2009
Without a doubt the best cheesecake ever in Chapel Hill was from Tripodi's. I long for it a couple of times a year.
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Chapel Hill is located on a hill whose only distinguishing feature in the 18th century was a small chapel on top called New Hope Chapel. This church was built in 1752 and is currently the location of The Carolina Inn. The town was founded in 1819, and chartered in 1851.
What is it that binds us to this place as to no other? It is not the well or the bell or the stone walls. or the crisp October nights. No, our love for this place is based upon the fact that it is as it was meant to be, The University of the People.
-- Charles Kuralt
Dark Side of the Hill -- Pink Floyd, the creators of the most popular album in history, Dark Side of the Moon, took the second half of their name from Floyd Council, a Chapel Hill native, and great blues singer and guitarist. He once belonged to a group called "The Chapel Hillbillies".
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There would probably be no Chapel Hill if the University of North Carolina Board of Trustees in 1793 had not chosen land across from New Hope Chapel for the location of the university. By 1800 there were about 100 people living in thirty houses surrounding the campus.
The University North Carolina's first student was Hinton James, who enrolled in February, 1795. There is now a dormitory on the campus named in his honor.
The University of North Carolina was closed from 1870 to 1875 because of lack of state funding.
William Ackland left his art collection and $1.25 million to Duke University in 1940 on the condition that he would be buried in the art museum that the University was to build with his bequest. Duke rejected this condition even though members of the Duke Family are buried in Duke Chapel. What followed was a long and acrimonious legal battle between Ackland relatives who now wanted the inheritance, Rollins College, and the University of North Carolina, each attempting to receive the funds. The case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, and in 1949 UNC was awarded the money for the museum. Ackland is buried near the museum's entrance. When the museum first opened, in the early sixties, there were rumors that his remains were leaking out of the mausoleum.
The official name of the Arboretum on the University of North Carolina campus is the Coker Arboretum. It is named after Dr. William Cocker, the University's first botany professor. It occupies a little more than five acres. It was founded in 1903.
Chapel Hill's main street has always been called Franklin Street. It was named after Benjamin Franklin in the early 1790s.
Chapel Hill High School and Chapel Hill Junior High were on Franklin Street in the same location as University Square until the mid 1960s.
The Colonial Drug Store at 450 West Franklin Street was owned and operated by John Carswell. It was famous for a fresh-squeezed carbonated orange beverage called a "Big O". In the early 1970s, I managed the Record and Tape Center next door, and must have had over 100 of those drinks. The Colonial Drug Store closed in 1996.
Sutton's Drugstore, which opened in 1923, has one of the last soda fountains in the South. It is one of the few businesses remaining on Franklin Street that was in operation when I was growing up in the 1950s.
Future President Gerald Ford lived in Chapel Hill twice. First when he was 24, in 1938, he took a law couse in summer school at UNC. He lived in the Carr Building, which was a law school dormitory. At the same time, Richard Nixon, the man he served under as Vice President, was attending law school at Duke. In 1942, Ford returned to Chapel Hill to attend the U.S. Navy's Pre-Flight School training program. He lived in a rental house on Hidden Hills Drive.
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Paul Tripodi is my great uncle and I am very proud to say that I will also be a chef one day and that my uncle was very successful and I will try to do the same