Showing posts with label Italian New York. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Italian New York. Show all posts

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Vesuvio Soho Greenwich Village New York

VESUVIO   

VESUVIO BREAD BAKERS PRINCE STREET ... Soho / GREENWICH VILLAGE New York Note: Vesuvio's Bakery has closed, however the Beautiful Piece of Italian New York History remains in its Historical Landmarked STOREFRONT



mrnewyorkny


      


SUNDAY SAUCE 

b7921-sundaysauce-small-new-cvr
      

Sunday, April 28, 2013

NEW YORK ITALIAN RED-SAUCE RESTAURANTS "Past & Present"




GINO'S
NOW DEFUNCT







INSIDE GINO'S DINING ROOM
With IT'S
FAMOUS ZEBRA WALLPAPER
GINO'S 
WAS On Lexington Avenue
Across From Bloomingdale's
Now SADLY DISEASED 
I MISS IT SO






Second Avenue Near East 11th Street
Still There
Not as Good As It used To Be
But It's Still There and It's Over 100 Years Old
And Definitely OLD SCHOOL RED SAUCE ITALIAN







JOHN'S
SINCE 1908
And STILL GOING STRONG
Above and Below













ROCCO'S
In BETTER DAYS
NOW DECEASED
CARBONE IS THERE NOW







THE FAMOUS
ROCCO
NEON SIGN




The FAMED ROCCO SIGN
SUPERIMPOSED With CARBONE






CARBONE
In THE FORMER ROCCO SPACE
HOPING To BECOME 
A CLASSIC OLD SCHOOL
ITALIAN RED SAUCE JOINT
BUT THE PRICES ARE PROHIBITIVE
"VERY EXPENSIVE"
AND NOT IN-LINE
WITH WHAT AN OLD SCHOOL
ITALIAN RED SAUCE RESTAURANT
IS And SHOULD BE
THAT IS
A WELCOMING CASUAL RESTAURANT
THAT HAS A WARM ATMOSPHERE 
AND TASTY ITALIAN and ITALIAN-AMERICAN FOOD
At FAIR MODERATE PRICES
THE FOOD IS QUITE GOOD
AS IS THE AMBIANCE
AS FOR THE PRICES???
YOU'VE PROBABLY HEARD
QUITE FAR FROM MODERATE
VERY EXPENSIVE !!!

IS CARBONE CLASIC RED SAUCE?
The PRICES AREN'T
THAT'S BEEN ESTABLISHED
IF IT WILL BE A CLASSIC
TIME WILL TELL !!!





La TAVOLA IS NEW YORK ITALIAN RED SAUCE 
AND ALL








BAR at GINO'S



GAY TALESE on GINO'S,  THE NEW YORKER, May 31, 2010



BASTA !  
by Gay Talese


An Italian restaurant called Gino, which opened in 1945 on Lexington Avenue near Sixty-first Street, has been known primarily for its moderate prices, its tomato-red wallpaper printed with three hundred and fourteen leaping zebras, and its determinedly uncreative chefs, whose regular customers are so amiably resigned to the kitchen’s limited and unchanging cuisine that it has never been necessary for these customers to consult the menu.
All the items on the menu appear on a single plastic-covered page and were handwritten in ink sixty-five years ago by the restaurant’s founder, Gino Circiello, a dapper and debonair trendsetter in 1945 who thereafter ignored all trends. Even a year after his death at eighty-nine, in 2001, when the restaurant was described in the Zagat Survey as “frozen in the 40’s,” the regulars liked to boast that, at Gino’s, nothing was new: within the zebra-covered walls of this place everything remained the same, including the fact that a stripe was missing from the rumps of half the zebras—a mistake made by the original designer which Mr. Gino, a superstitious Italian of Neapolitan origin, chose not to correct, because to do so, he feared, might bring him bad luck.
So the restaurant’s décor as arranged at mid-twentieth century extended into the twenty-first: the same twenty-seven wooden tables and seventy-four chairs, the same small kitchen (ventilation provided by a half-opened skylight). And, week after week, the same daily specials: on Mondays it was osso buco, on Tuesdays it was nothing special, on Wednesdays it was lamb shank, on Thursdays it was veal Genovese, on Fridays it was fish soup, on Saturdays it was the same as Wednesdays (lamb shank), and on Sundays it was lasagna.
Gino’s most faithful customers, creatures of habit, feasted on consistency and the devoted attention of a single waiter, who (as one of nine waiters sharing the afternoon and evening shifts) oversaw each of his assigned tables for the duration of the meal. In the interest of controlling the overhead, Mr. Gino regarded busboys as an unnecessary expense, and he felt similarly about floral decorations. While the cost of the fresh flowers at La Grenouille is three thousand dollars a week, the plastic flowers at Gino’s—tucked into a half-dozen pearlescent plaster cornucopias that hang from the walls between the zebras—cost six hundred dollars a year.
The responsibility for purchasing these artificial flowers fell to one of the restaurant’s two current owners, a Neapolitan of sixty-nine named Michele Miele, who is also the chef. He buys the flowers at a Wal-Mart near his home in Sullivan County, and he washes them in the restaurant’s kitchen three times a year. Right now, the cornucopias are filled with spring flowers—plastic daisies, daffodils, tulips, lilies—and during the holidays he replaces them with chrysanthemums.
But there will be no chrysanthemums at Gino’s this Christmas and no more lamb-shank specials on Saturdays. Mr. Miele and his seventy-year-old partner, a fellow-Neapolitan named Salvatore Doria—who came to Gino’s as a waiter in 1974, after a decade at Barbetta, on West Forty-sixth Street—revealed last week that, owing to an eight-thousand-dollar-per-month increase that would drive the rent to more than thirty thousand dollars, plus the health-care costs sought by its employees’ union, the restaurant will close after Saturday night’s dinner on May 29th.
The tenant who said he will replace Gino’s at 780 Lexington is a Beverly Hills bakery entrepreneur named Charles Nelson, who, with his wife, Candace, owns and operates Sprinkles Cupcakes shops not only in California but also in Texas and Arizona. Gino’s will vacate the premises in mid-June; Doria says that he plans to retire, and Miele says that he would like to open another restaurant nearby if he can find a backer—a big if in this economy, he concedes, given that he has already failed to attract new partners to confront the rising costs of operating Gino’s.
Meanwhile, Miele has abandoned his chores in the kitchen to his subordinates and has taken to sitting in the dining room exchanging greetings and condolences with regular customers, who, having got the word, are now coming in almost every day in anticipation of the time when there will not be a menu for them to ignore. In the crowd recently were the architect I. M. Pei and his wife, Eileen, who have been eating at Gino’s for sixty years. “Oh, I’m so sorry this is ending,” Miele said. “But we tried to listen to Mr. Gino, who told us, ‘Take care of the customer, don’t change anything, and Gino will never die.’ ” Doria added, “Yes, we used to say, ‘The world changes, but nothing changes at Gino.’ ” 








Friday, March 8, 2013

BATALI NOT THE ONLY MARIO IN TOWN



Yes Boys and girls "Mario Batali" is no longer the only Mario in Town ! The town of Greenwich Village that is where Mario Batali has been The King Mario for some years now with such renowned restaurants as; Po', Babbo, and Lupa .. Here comes Mario, Mario Carbone that is, a former employee of Mr. Batali at Del Posto where Mario Carbone was a Sous-Chef before opening two renowned restaurants of his own, Torrisi Italian Specialties and "Parm" both side-by-side in 
Noho / Little Italy ...
Mario Carbone is now opening his namesake restaurant "Carbone" in the old Rocco's space on Sullivan Street across from Mario Batali's Roman Trattoria "Lupa." Mario Carbone with Co-Chef and Business Partner Rich Torrisi unlike Batali who mostly serves hard-core-authentic Italian Cuisine (of Italy) with Batali twists here-and-there will be serving Italian-American Classics. Mario Carbone that is. Carbone promises old New York Italian Favorites like; Baked Clams, Meatballs, Linguine Vongole (Clam Sauce), Lobster Fra D'Avlo and other Italian and Italian-American Classics. Carbone also says that they are looking to evoke 1950's Downtown New York Italian style restaurant.
Torrisi and Carbone have done a fine job with their two previous restaurants Parm and Torrisi Italian Specialties and we're hoping they will continue, and expect they will at "Carbone." These guys are loved by their followers, yet disdained by some and have already receive quite a bit of negativity on the Internet it seems from the mainly fans of Rocco's who don't want to see these guys at Rocco's and in the neighborhood. I for one used to go to Rocco's and loved the place. I also like what Torissi and Carbone are doing, and I'm looking forward to Carbone being quite good. If I can't have Rocco's, I'll take Carbone, and am hoping and betting this Mario is gonna be a Winner in The Village, and Greenwich Village Italian and the long honored history it has. good Luck boys!




Daniel Bellino-Zwicke