Meet us where the bread is baked by family
The story of Scudiero’s Italian Bakery & Deli begins in Serino, Italy where Umbaldo Datoli was a third-generation baker, having inherited the family bakery from his father who inherited it from his father before him.
The war, of course, changed everything. Datoli immigrated with his family to the United States where, in 1954, he opened a small Italian bakery on Lake Street in Melrose Park.
It was the Italian grocery in the neighborhood where people gathered to chat and buy products from Italy as well as specialty, homemade Italian bread made by Datoli just as his father and grandfather had made before him.
The bakery has always remained in the family and now the fifth generation of bakers make the famous bread that people come from far and wide to try.
In fact, the thing to do at Scudiero’s is to buy the bread and then take a picture holding up the bag with the loaf inside. You then leave the picture in the bakery where there are thousands of pictures like this from regulars who live in the neighborhood to celebrities like Frank Sinatra!
It’s a family affair at Scudiero’s Italian Bakery and Deli where the fifth-generation of bakers produces the Italian bread that made this bakery famous. When you stop in at Scudiero’s, you’ll immediately smell the baking bread that’s made from the same recipe that has passed through five generations of family bakers.
Fresh, made-to-order sandwiches are about $8 like the Corned Beef Sub or the Mama Lena’s Meatball Sub.
Woodstone-fired pizzas start at $11.
Umbaldo Datoli passed away in 1969, leaving the bakery to his daughter Lena Scudiero. In time, her husband Joe Scudiero took over bakery operations, and now their sons Frank, Aldo, and Anthony are baking the famous bread.
Located at 2113 W. Lake Street in Melrose Park, Scudiero’s is just a half-mile walk from the Melrose Park Stop on the Union Pacific West Metra Railway. It’s just 14 miles west of downtown Chicago.
