To walk into Veniero’s (@venierospastry), the beloved Italian pastry shop on Manhattan’s East 11th Street, just off First Avenue, is to step into a dreamscape of buttery cookies, cannoli and tarts heavy and trembling with jewel-colored fruit. Each confection is fashioned and finished by hand by one of the store’s 16 bakers. The store’s co-owner, Robert Zerilli, is the great-nephew of Antonio Veniero, who founded the shop in 1894. Zerilli is the fourth generation of the dynasty to run the place. Veniero, born near Sorrento in 1870, arrived in new York when he was 15 and went to work in a candy factory. He bought the building on East 11th Street in 1894 and began producing his own handmade confectionery there; when customers asked for something to go with it, he began offering espresso and biscotti. It was backbreaking work: There was no electricity; ice came in hundred-pound blocks; deliveries were made on horse-pulled carts. Pastry was baked in a coal oven in the store’s backyard, which is now part of the cafe. Zerilli’s father, Frank, began working at Veniero’s in the 1930s and bought the business in 1970. “I love it because it’s a step back in time when there are so few of these old places left,” says the actor Steve Schirripa. Currently playing Anthony Abetemarco in the CBS police procedural “Blue Bloods,” he is perhaps best known for his role as Bobby “Bacala” Baccalieri in “The Sopranos.” Last year, after he and Michael Imperioli, who played Christopher Moltisanti in the show, were finished recording their podcast about the series called “Talking Sopranos,” they’d head to the bakery. “Michael and me, we’d go over to Veniero’s for a cappuccino and a pastry,” he says. “And I send their cookies for gifts all over the country.” Read the full story about this icon of Italian American New York at the link in our bio. Written by @reggienadelson. Photos by @danielterna.