Frankie and Priscilla got married. And opened a restaurant. Then closed it because of construction traffic along Biscayne Boulevard. File photo by Mitchell Zachs/Magicalphotos.com

I used to have to call 411 on my phone when a greasy wave of lust would strike me, round about Miami’s Upper Eastside. Frankie would have what I needed. That is if I could just keep the jones in check while navigating the hellish construction on Biscayne Boulevard and somehow manage not to hit any of the panhandlers, pimps, prostitutes, immigration hopefuls or the poor souls attempting to get a bus.

Eventually, I had the number memorized, tattooed on my brain by countless hits of steak, cheese, onions and bread organized into a powerful opiate by a large man in a ball cap and a Bada Bing T-shirt. Frankie’s Big City Grill. Philly cheesesteak. Say it.

I’m not the only addict. The place was a neighborhood favorite. It was nearly always full of cops, all hopped-up on steak, pork or chicken, to the point that one year I gave them an award for “Best Place to Find a Sandwich and a Cop.” I say was, because last week Frankie Crupi and his wife Priscilla shut the place down.

Frankie knew the advancing FDOT war zone was going to kill his sandwich shop. So he started looking around about six months ago for a new spot. He thought about South Beach. Then his old boss, Mark Soyka, made him the proverbial offer. Frankie had run a couple of Soyka’s restaurants for him, most notably as general manager of the Van Dyke Café on Lincoln Road. Soyka wanted to bring him back to run his successful gourmet pizza operation on Biscayne Boulevard, Andiamo Pizza. He wanted the sandwiches, too.

“It was a no-brainer,” Frankie told me. “It’s a perfect marriage.” Frankie is the new managing partner of Andiamo. He’s working there now, figuring out how to reorganize the pizza side to fit with the sandwich side. Once he does that, he’ll bring in Cil, as he calls his wife. Then I’ll be back to get my fix.

Anyway, I spent a couple of hours with Frankie and Priscilla as they cleaned out the shop last Tuesday. The original plan was to come in on the last day they were open and work behind the line, have Frankie show me how to make a Philly cheesesteak, by far the most popular of the 77 different sandwiches they made. They sold up to 500 cheesesteaks a week.

But once word got out they were leaving, the deluge of customers cleaned them out of almost everything a full day ahead of schedule. Throughout the cleaning process, the phone rang constantly, and people still tried to pick their way unsteadily through the crumbled concrete outside to rattle the door, just in case. Then they would press their noses to the glass door and try to peer in. Finally, Frankie would open it and deliver the bad news.

“No way!” cried one distraught woman.

“Way,” Frankie said, firmly.

A cop stopped by, and seeing the place closed, figured it was being robbed. Once Frankie had assured him that I was basically harmless, the interview continued.

Frankie, 43, a native of Philadelphia, got to Miami in 1996 and was immediately hired at the Van Dyke as a night manager. Six months later, he became general manager. Priscilla, 44, was the assistant GM. They were friends for a long time, until one day both realized they had crushes on each other.

“I think he’s handsome,” Priscilla said. “I think he looks like a magician.”

“She’s funny and she’s a good dancer,” Frankie said. “It’s stupid corny, but we’re best friends. She married someone the opposite of what her family wanted, an Italian Yankee fan amongst the Irish Red Sox fans.”

Despite the baseball divide, Priscilla and Frankie shared a dream about opening their own place. “I’ve traveled a lot,” Frankie recounted. “I’ve eaten a lot. My whole fantasy was to have a shop in my neighborhood. I’ve always seen Philly cheesesteaks done here and they never work.”

Then one night the pair watched a PBS special about regional sandwiches from all over the country. After they wiped away the drool, “the light went on,” Priscilla said. Miami residents hail from everywhere, so why not have sandwiches from everywhere?

When they drove by a defunct Domino’s on Biscayne Boulevard just south of 87th Street and saw it was for rent, they made the sanity-challenging leap. They took the bars off the windows, painted brickwork on the outside of the place and added an awning.

A counter went in, stacked with magazines from every major city in the United States. The city wouldn’t let them put up signs on the street, so the Crupis drove around handing out fliers, especially at all the police substations. They did a mailing in Miami Shores.

The first couple of months after the June 2003 opening were hard, partially because they did a breakfast opening and no one came. Then the media started to find them. A small flurry of articles boosted their profile and customers trickled in. Once they got a taste, they were hooked. Italian beef, roast pork, cutlets, veal, Italian sausage, meatballs, hoagies, chicken and BBQ, each from its respective city — Boston, New York, Miami, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Houston, St. Louis, etc.

Besides the sandwich formulas, which Frankie boils down to “good-quality meat, good cheese and good bread,” intolerance for adulteration garnered the shop a certain authenticity.

For example, one day a lady came in and asked Priscilla, who runs the front counter, to have Frankie stir ranch dressing into the steak meat on the grill. Priscilla tried to explain that this idea was not only icky, but possibly immoral. The woman persisted, saying that it was her money and she should get whatever she wanted.

“Not only did Frankie throw her out,” Priscilla recalled. “He told her to ‘Go to Miami Subs, where you belong.’ And then he went in the cooler and threw out all the ranch dressing. So no customer got ranch dressing for awhile.”

There have been a few similar altercations involving ketchup. Ask for that on the wrong sandwich and be prepared for strong language. That said, Frankie’s did allow leeway on certain recognized variations of the classics. There’s a whole subculture of Philly cheesesteak eaters who insist on Cheez Whiz, and so a shelf of the cooler was dedicated to bottles of that labeled with each customer’s name.

For those who got it, Frankie’s became the sort of place where you could bring in your own decorations. The specials’ board was rendered useless by dozens of customers who started taping pictures of their kids to it. One customer in the bobbing-head doll business had a special Frankie bobblehead made and it sat by the cash register. Another customer then decided to dress the doll up for every holiday.

“She came in and took measurements,” Priscilla said. “Whenever she would come she’d wait until no one was looking and quickly dress the doll.”

The cop situation turned out to be one of Frankie’s great brain waves. Local cops from several departments made the place a regular hangout. There’d be a couple of vice squad guys at one table, an undercover unit at another, maybe a few beat cops. Frankie remembers a group of cops working Liberty City who would come in all the time to eat and pray together before going undercover.

“They were all tatted up,” he said. “One time they brought in an informant they had to rough up to make it look real and they had roughed him up a little too much. So they brought him here for a sandwich.”

A beat-down for a Philly? An even trade, I’d say. Priscilla said once a couple of cops working a guard detail at Jackson Memorial Hospital used the lights and sirens to come pick up two cheesesteaks in the 15-minute window they had for lunch. “Oh, one time these two regulars came in, two partners, and they had on short shorts in funny colors and tanks tops that were too tight,” she laughed. “They were really embarrassed. Then they explained they were going undercover at Haulover [a nude beach known for gay sex in the bushes].

Frankie credits the police presence as the reason the place never got robbed, as many other stores in the area have been.

But cops and reporters weren’t the only fans. Rock legend Iggy Pop was a regular, favoring the cheesesteaks. The coaching staff of the University of Miami’s football program were regulars. The Miami Heat’s back office was near addicted to the food, even going so far as to develop a superstition that the sandwiches were helping the team win games during the 2006 season. The last Sunday home game of the season, the Heat asked Frankie to provide sandwiches even though the store was closed on Sundays. He obliged, got a ticket behind the bench and the Heat went on to win the NBA championship.

So now, after four years of Frankie and Priscilla working double-shifts six days a week, after selling their house and turning down lucrative franchise offers that felt like selling out, the partnership with Andiamo Pizza makes perfect sense. They’ll take most of the Italian menu with them.

“The main thing is to not change a thing because it’s so successful,” Frankie said. “It’s our favorite pizza place.”

When I asked whether he would do some fusion, such as a Philly cheesesteak pizza, Frankie shot me a warning look.

Of course not.

Comments? E-mail wakefield@miamisunpost.com.