Delighted screams and whoops of joy echo across the fairgrounds from the midway, punctuating the soft sounds of sizzling food rising from Paul Basilio’s Italian Sausage.
Workers clasp notepads, waiting to take the next order while mounds of onions and peppers sit waiting to be devoured, their aroma drifting out into the summer haze.
Valerie Basilio is hugging fairgoers: children, adults, regulars. She has been greeting her customers for as long as she can remember — she never misses the fair.
Basilio’s Italian Sausage has been a staple at the fair since opening its doors in 1956, marking 2016 as its 60th anniversary. The concession stand is one of the oldest on the fairgrounds, second only to Baker’s Chicken Coop, and still operates out of the original wooden building it started in.
Moriah Ratner | Staff Photographer
“People always say, ‘I’ve been coming here since I was a kid, now I come here with my children and their kids,’” Valerie Basilio said.
The business is held together by three generations of the Basilio family. Paul Basilio founded the business, his daughter Valerie, as she described her job, “signs the checks,” and Paul’s granddaughter Madison works behind the counter.
For two weeks every August, Paul Basilio sits off to the side, watching as the business he built thrives. Opening day of the fair this year, the 87-year-old was wandering around the fairgrounds with no shirt on with his daughter and granddaughter chasing him, begging him to put one on.
Every now and then he ducks into the kitchen, stopping only to pose for pictures with “his fans.”
“People come here now, to see him,” Valerie Basilio said. “He’s the oldest living concessioner here.”
Moriah Ratner | Staff Photographer
Originally, the stand was named Carmen Basilio’s Italian Sausage, after Paul Basilio’s brother. Carmen Basilio was a famous boxer, featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated numerous times and famous for beating Sugar Ray Robinson at Yankee Stadium in 1957.
Since then, the business has been handed down generation to generation. Valerie Basilio has been working the stand for nearly her entire life and her daughter has not missed a fair yet.
Valerie described how she would bring a motorhome each year and park it near the stand. She gave birth one April and worked the fair in August. She would work, then return to the motor home to breastfeed her daughter Madison.
“All I remember my whole entire life is the fair,” Madison Gregoris said.
Each year, without fail, Valerie and Madison return to the fair, working up to 16-hour days. Valerie rarely takes a break — if she’s not greeting her favorite customers, she’s poring over paperwork or interacting with the workers in the stand, all of whom are clad in black uniform shirts proudly reading “Paul Basilio’s State Fair Sausage, best at the fair since 1956.”
Moriah Ratner | Staff Photographer
Basilio’s operates almost without written records. There is no set recipe for the sausage, Valerie said. Each year, the staff will taste the meat and add seasoning as needed. If something needs changing, it happens in the opening days of the fair. This year, more fennel was needed but Valerie said they “nailed it.”
Nothing is recorded at the stand — no recipes and no official list of employees. Everything at the stand operates within a close-knit circle. There is no job application. Each year, Valerie Basilio pulls out her phone and texts her friends to ask if they are coming back to work this year, friends that have become family.
The family atmosphere extends beyond blood ties. The cooks serving up the food have been around for nearly as long as the stand.
Moriah Ratner | Staff Photographer
Gary DiGeorge, a cook at the stand, said working the fair each year acts as his vacation. He began working for Basilio’s when he was 15. Now, he has spent 43 years serving up food to customers that line the benches of the green tables on either side of the stand.
The toughest part of the job, DiGeorge said, is the heat. He flipped his hands over, tough from years of working the stove, revealing scars and a heat rash from his cooking gloves.
DiGeorge sees repeat customers every year. He said the stand is characterized by jokes and pranks each staff member pulls.
Valerie Basilio described how she had been caught on tape being scared by a giant fake rat. She spun round and chopped off the tail with a nearby machete. The next day, it was a cook’s turn to be pranked. One after another, each employee said they were there for the jokes.
“Who really wants to be here for minimum wage?” Valerie Basilio said. “We just sit here and laugh.”
John “Set” Cerio, another one of the cooks, echoed this sentiment. Cerio began working the fair in the ‘80s but had to stop when he got a full-time job.
“When I was working at Price Chopper, I would come up a couple of times to see everyone,” Cerio said. “They would hold up the tongs and say, ‘ready for work?’”
When he retired two years ago, he was asked to return and immediately accepted.
After 60 years at the fair, however, the stand has seen some changes this year. In 2015, Gov. Andrew Cuomo set aside $50 million for renovations to the fairgrounds, and the Lakeview Amphitheater opened.
The changes to the fairgrounds have hit business hard, Valerie said. No longer do late night concertgoers trail past the stand, looking for a sandwich for the ride home.
Basilio’s has been trailing in profit margins this year and Valerie blames the renovations to the fairgrounds.
“There was a time when there was only restaurants on restaurant row, and we would have people six deep,” Valerie Basilio said. “We were making money hand over fist, it’s not like that anymore.”
Moriah Ratner | Staff Photographer
Despite the changes, the Basilios still see the lighter side of things. Madison and Valerie laughed as they recalled Paul trying to adjust prices. Madison joked that her grandfather still wants to charge 1930s prices.
But Valerie said the store and those who work there will survive whatever comes their way.
“I think I’m invincible, just hardcore, I don’t let anything get me down,” Valerie said. I feel like I’ve taken some real punches in my life and just nothing gets me over.”
In addition to working the stand every summer, Valerie works two jobs. She wants to ensure Madison will have no student loans after she graduates.
Valerie said she makes a decent living, decent enough to come back to the fair every year for a vacation working at the sausage stand, laughing with her friends, family and especially her customers, the people that keep Basilio’s alive by coming back, year after year.
For Paul Basilio, the reason why people come back is obvious: “It’s clean, and I’m here,” he said.
For Valerie Basilio, it goes a little further: “It’s tradition. It’s tradition to meet here, it’s tradition to eat here, it’s tradition to work here,” she said.
“We haven’t moved so when people want to meet, they know where we are,” Valerie said. “Meet at Basilio’s.”
Moriah Ratner | Staff Photographer
Banner photo by Moriah Ratner | Staff Photographer
Published on August 30, 2016 at 11:16 pm
Contact Rachel: rcgilber@syr.edu
