He did it all for the calamari: Palizzi chef Joey Baldino will revive South Philly’s Bomb Bomb BBQ Grill

South Philadelphia’s kitschy, old-school Bomb Bomb BBQ Grill & Italian Restaurant, which closed last December after 33 years, will come back under a new owner — chef Joey Baldino, who also owns the acclaimed Zeppoli and Palizzi Social Club — in late summer or early fall.

Changes will be minimal. “The Bomb Bomb is going to stay the Bomb Bomb,” said Baldino, who as a kid ate the stuffed calamari there with his parents. “It was a great staple in the neighborhood. I’m going to put my own little twist on it, but I really want to keep it the way it is as a neighborhood spot.”

Its formal name will be the Bomb Bomb Bar, as the barbecue ribs won’t be revived. The sign out front at 1026 Wolf St., with its stacked black bombs, will remain. “That’s like the best thing in South Philly,” Baldino said.

Baldino said he would maintain what he calls “the seafood Italiano” menu — scampi, crab legs, clams casino, linguini and clams, et al. — in the rear dining room. He also said that he enjoyed the calamari fests that previous owners Frank and Deb Barbato did twice a year.

The front barroom’s menu will be as it was, too, including a roast pork sandwich and “some fried stuff,” he said.

Baldino said one of his former sous chefs, Max Hackey — now sous chef at Friday Saturday Sunday — will oversee the food.

Baldino said he had heard “out of the clear blue sky” from Frank Barbato — whose father, Frank Sr., opened Bomb Bomb in 1951 — that he and Deb Barbato were considering retirement.

“One of the things that I loved about the place was him and his family,” Baldino said. “That’s what really made me want to continue it. I feel an obligation to them to to continue it.”

Deb Barbato called Baldino “just the fit for that place. He’s going to be such an asset to the neighborhood. He’s old-school.”

Baldino has been down this road before. He inherited Palizzi — an old-time club serving Italian immigrants in the early 20th century — from his uncle. Baldino largely kept the look and feel when he reopened it in 2017 for a new crop of members.

The Bomb Bomb’s backstory is as explosive as its name. In February 1936, a chef named Dominick LePore left his job at a South Philadelphia bar and grill and took a job at a new joint, now the site of the Bomb Bomb at Warnock and Wolf Streets.

His former boss ordered him to return.

When LePore refused, the new bar was firebombed in the middle of the night, causing no injuries but shattering windows and “rocking houses to their foundations,” as The Inquirer reported in a front-page article on Feb. 17, 1936.

When LePore turned him down again, a second bomb went off. This time, the story goes, LePore got the message and returned to his old job.

The bar, known then as Bob’s Taproom, became known around the neighborhood as the “Boom Boom.” By the time Frank Barbato Sr. bought the place, 15 years after the explosions, it was the “Bomb Bomb.”