The reason most people love D’Elia’s Grinders, the 70-year-old sandwich shop in Riverside, also happens to be the reason plenty of people hate it, too. 

The family-owned Italian deli has been baking its own bread since it opened and that bread isn’t your typical soft sandwich roll, made ubiquitous by every deli franchise from Subway to your local Safeway. D’Elia’s bread has a crisp, almost flaky exterior and its owners get complaints that the bread is stale on almost a daily basis. At the same time, they get just as many devotees begging them to open a location in a neighboring state. 

“Our Achilles heel, our blessing and our curse, is our bread,” co-owner Brian Perrone said. 

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Ralph and Mary D’Elia and John and Gladys Perrone opened D’Elia’s Grinders in 1955, expanding their family’s sandwich shop roots from Italy and Norwich, Connecticut, to Riverside. They had moved out to the Inland Empire seeking warmth and the California dream, baking bread from an old Italian recipe and selling it initially as a combination bakery/deli. The bakery economics didn’t make sense in the end, so they eliminated that part of the business after six months and went all in on sandwiches. But the founders remained dedicated to baking fresh bread every day of the week for their signature product.

The exterior of D’Elia’s Grinders is seen in Riverside, Calif., on Feb. 11, 2026.

Fresh sandwich bread at D’Elia’s Grinders in Riverside, Calif., on Feb. 11, 2026.

A staff member prepares a sandwich at D’Elia’s Grinders in Riverside, Calif., on Feb. 11, 2026.

Just as they kept the original recipe for the bread, they also left “grinder” in the shop’s name. It’s a moniker not many West Coasters are familiar with. It’s a term that began in the Northeast with some of its origins up for debate, but most agree it probably had at least something to do the “grind” it required of your teeth to get through these thick-breaded sandwiches. “People still ask me, what’s a grinder?” co-owner John Perrone Jr. said with a laugh during a recent SFGATE visit, admitting it’s probably not great for the shop’s searchability.

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John inherited the business with his cousin Brian from their twin fathers, who ran the shop for decades after they inherited it from their parents, the original owners. John and Brian both worked at the original shop as teens and were in and out........

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