The pepperoni roll, what I dub “Appalachia’s Secret”, has been an integral part of daily life in my hometown of Fairmont, West Virginia since the  1920s or 30s. Nobody seems to recall the exact year it was introduced.

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During one of those decades, Giuseppe (Joseph) Argiro of Country Club Bakery  (which is still operational) began baking small sticks of pepperoni inside bread dough. No doubt Argiro was inspired by the coal miners, who knowing how invincible the cured meat was, often took large sticks of pepperoni and chunks of Italian bread down into the depths of the bituminous ore. Argiro’s delectable result was a self-contained  pepperoni bun about the size of a hot dog where the oils of the pepperoni permeated into the dough while baking – a “handy subterranean  snack for miners”.

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Over the years other bakeries, carry-outs, grocery stores, even gas stations in the tri-county area of Northern West  Virginia, have ventured into the Pepperoni Market, so that now there is competition in town and with the nearby regional cities, like  Clarksburg’s Tomaro’s and D’ Annunzio’s bakeries.

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In Morgantown, home of the West Virginia University Mountaineers, sports announcers claim the Pepperoni Roll as the football and basketball players’ adopted “fav” food.

Serving the rolls also became a more elaborate, competitive process. Colasessano’s of Fairmont jumped into the fray in 1950, offering a giant version with peppers in sauce, provolone cheese  and even chili (hot dog) sauce inside. The success of Colasessano’s – first nurtured by the original owner known nationwide as “Spider” - has been long-lived, evident by the recent expansion of a large second restaurant.

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West Virginians are  passionate about their state’s “unofficial official food”. Pepperoni Chic hopes you will be too… and enjoy the authentic pastas of Calabria,  Italy – birthplace of Argiro and my grandparents.