concern; when he arrived, he went straight to the walk-in to see if he could shift things from large containers to smaller ones. If he couldn’t, the work being done by the prep kitchen would have no place to be stored. Once, I helped him prepare a herb salad by destemming the herbs to concentrate their flavors. We started in the dining room, because there was no space in the kitchen. We moved to the dark coffee station in front of the kitchen doors, when tables were being set up, until finally we were backed up against the ladies’ room.
In the afternoon, if you can get a perch in the kitchen, you don’t leave it. You don’t answer the phone, run an errand, make a cup of coffee, have a pee, because if you do you’ll lose your space. Around two o’clock, trays of braised meat came out of the oven, but there was no place to put them, so they sat on top of the trash cans. Trays were stacked on top of those trays. And sometimes there were trays stacked on top of those.
Mario flits between the shifts, unpredictably. He no longer runs the kitchen—he sneaks up on it to see that it’s functioning properly or simply visits it when the spirit moves him—but the public expectation is that he’s there every night, preparing every dish, an idea that he reinforces, flamboyantly rushing out plates from the kitchen to special customers. The year after Babbo opened, he had a brain aneurysm, alarming his family. “I thought, Oh my God, here it comes,” his brother Dana recalls. “Mario’s Marilyn Monroe moment, having burned up both ends of the candle.” It also alarmed Babbo customers, who canceled their reservations. “The only time anyone could walk in and get a table,” Elisa remembers.
One afternoon, Mario showed up to make a special called a
cioppino.
He’d prepared the dish the night before but had got only four orders. “This time, the waiters are going to push it, and if they don’t sell out I’ll fire them,” he said cheerfully.
Cioppino
is a contraction of
“C’è un po’?”
—is there a little something?—an Italian-immigrant soup made from leftovers and whatever “little thing” a member of the household was able to beg from fishermen at the end of the day. On this occasion, the “little thing” would be crabmeat, and, true to the ideology of the dish, Mario roamed the kitchen, collecting whatever was on hand—tomato pulp and liquid, left over from tomatoes that had been roasted, carrot tops, a bowl of onion skins, anything. He would charge twenty-nine dollars.
Mario took over a position normally occupied by Dominic Cipollone, the sauté chef. Dominic had been at Babbo for two years; it was his first restaurant job. (“Whatever he is,” Mario said, “we made him.”) He has a heavy, saturnine manner and a Fred-Flintstone-in-need-of-a-shave look, and, at one point, in his lugubrious way, he turned and ran into Mario.
“Dom, you just bumped me,” Mario said.
Dominic apologized. His tone was ironic; it said, Of course I bumped you. You’re a big guy and you were in my way.
But Mario was not appeased. “Dom, don’t ever do that again.”
Dom was unsure how to respond. Was it a joke?
“I do not want to be bumped by you,” Mario continued. “You see this counter? I own it. You see this floor? I own it. Everything here I own. I don’t want you to bump me.”
I discovered Dominic in the walk-in. “I’ve got Mario at my station. I’m cleaning up after him, and he’s bumping me. I’m staying here.”
(In the event, thirty-four
cioppini
were sold that night. “The waiters came through,” Mario told me when I showed up the next morning and found him reclining on a banquette, drinking a whiskey. “I’m very happy.”)
Once Mario left the kitchen, you never knew when he was coming back. Elisa recalled the trepidation that had surrounded his departures in the early days, especially during a Chinatown phase, when he’d return with purchases he felt should be served as specials.
In the afternoon, if you can get a perch in the kitchen, you don’t leave it. You don’t answer the phone, run an errand, make a cup of coffee, have a pee, because if you do you’ll lose your space. Around two o’clock, trays of braised meat came out of the oven, but there was no place to put them, so they sat on top of the trash cans. Trays were stacked on top of those trays. And sometimes there were trays stacked on top of those.
Mario flits between the shifts, unpredictably. He no longer runs the kitchen—he sneaks up on it to see that it’s functioning properly or simply visits it when the spirit moves him—but the public expectation is that he’s there every night, preparing every dish, an idea that he reinforces, flamboyantly rushing out plates from the kitchen to special customers. The year after Babbo opened, he had a brain aneurysm, alarming his family. “I thought, Oh my God, here it comes,” his brother Dana recalls. “Mario’s Marilyn Monroe moment, having burned up both ends of the candle.” It also alarmed Babbo customers, who canceled their reservations. “The only time anyone could walk in and get a table,” Elisa remembers.
One afternoon, Mario showed up to make a special called a
cioppino.
He’d prepared the dish the night before but had got only four orders. “This time, the waiters are going to push it, and if they don’t sell out I’ll fire them,” he said cheerfully.
Cioppino
is a contraction of
“C’è un po’?”
—is there a little something?—an Italian-immigrant soup made from leftovers and whatever “little thing” a member of the household was able to beg from fishermen at the end of the day. On this occasion, the “little thing” would be crabmeat, and, true to the ideology of the dish, Mario roamed the kitchen, collecting whatever was on hand—tomato pulp and liquid, left over from tomatoes that had been roasted, carrot tops, a bowl of onion skins, anything. He would charge twenty-nine dollars.
Mario took over a position normally occupied by Dominic Cipollone, the sauté chef. Dominic had been at Babbo for two years; it was his first restaurant job. (“Whatever he is,” Mario said, “we made him.”) He has a heavy, saturnine manner and a Fred-Flintstone-in-need-of-a-shave look, and, at one point, in his lugubrious way, he turned and ran into Mario.
“Dom, you just bumped me,” Mario said.
Dominic apologized. His tone was ironic; it said, Of course I bumped you. You’re a big guy and you were in my way.
But Mario was not appeased. “Dom, don’t ever do that again.”
Dom was unsure how to respond. Was it a joke?
“I do not want to be bumped by you,” Mario continued. “You see this counter? I own it. You see this floor? I own it. Everything here I own. I don’t want you to bump me.”
I discovered Dominic in the walk-in. “I’ve got Mario at my station. I’m cleaning up after him, and he’s bumping me. I’m staying here.”
(In the event, thirty-four
cioppini
were sold that night. “The waiters came through,” Mario told me when I showed up the next morning and found him reclining on a banquette, drinking a whiskey. “I’m very happy.”)
Once Mario left the kitchen, you never knew when he was coming back. Elisa recalled the trepidation that had surrounded his departures in the early days, especially during a Chinatown phase, when he’d return with purchases he felt should be served as specials.
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