Donna sets her table, East Hampton, New York

XVI

HOME

My father, Gerald Lennard, was a successful businessman. Originally trained as an accountant like his father, he quickly decided number crunching wasn’t for him. He set off to work for one of their clients in the metals business and loved it. In 1962, he split off on his own to found Gerald Metals, his namesake metals trading company. He pushed himself relentlessly and became an innovator in the field.

He was a generous supporter of the arts both philanthropically and as a collector, a pursuit in which he deployed both his highly refined sense of taste and his flinty business acumen. The walls of his home were filled with paintings by artists he identified early in their careers and who also found their way to success. I think it gave him great pride to have his keen aesthetic eye validated.

Some of the art was displayed in his lovely home in Wainscott, a beach town on Long Island, a beautiful sun-flooded house with the sound of the ocean in the distance. The family used to gather on the porch out back facing Wainscott Pond, Dad’s peaceful place. I spent a lot of time there, as the ocean is also my place of peace; plus my restaurateur schedule made braving the Long Island Expressway much easier in the off hours. I would show up with Joaquin on a Friday afternoon and enjoy the tranquility away from the restaurant and the city. My relationship with my dad was not an easy one. Two Tauruses, our horns often clashed. But we were also similar in many ways: a love of nature and the ocean, art, travel, delicious food and wine, and a stubborn commitment to getting the details right.

My dad passed away in 2018 just before his eighty-eighth birthday, three months before Joaquin’s bar mitzvah. Joaquin chose to move the location of the event to his grandfather’s beach house, where friends and family gathered as I wrapped Joaquin in his grandpa’s tallit. Dad was very much present on that perfect June day. The full il Buco team was there too, preparing a feast to top all feasts, uniting us all in a joyous celebration.

The house is now on the market, and the real estate agent has given the space what he might call an upgrade. The paintings I remembered have now been replaced by the sort of generic art one sees in lifestyle catalogs. My dad’s love of patterns and color, once evident in the upholstery of the chairs, is now hidden under white slipcovers. It’s beachy and modern and beautiful, but I miss my dad’s spirit.

On a recent summer weekend, I was out at my own house, a little cottage in East Hampton’s Springs facing Gardiner’s Bay, to entertain some friends. I needed a few extra glass pitchers for margaritas, and, since the house hadn’t yet sold, I drove over to my dad’s place to pilfer the kitchen cabinets. I had been there before, of course, since he passed and steeled myself for its new look. But it is still such a shock to see all the life and all the materials that my father had amassed during his almost ninety years exist somewhere between gone and going. Happily, the kitchen had been left largely untouched. As I searched the cabinets, memories flooded back to me. Touched off by well-worn wooden utensils, by the skillets in which I had made him hundreds of breakfasts, I drifted into reverie. The happiest I’d seen my dad had been hunched over a breakfast of fried eggs generously covered in shaved bottarga, or his favorite dinner, a bowl of my pasta con le vongole, which I so enjoyed preparing for him in that sun-soaked, perfectly appointed kitchen.

I eventually chose three distinct pitchers, locked the door, and headed home to prepare for the feast. I ruminated on my father’s life and, naturally, my own life’s path. For twenty-five years, I’ve been maniacally devoted to provenance. I’ve spent decades sourcing product. I’ve passed more sleepless nights than I care to remember, endured screaming matches over fennel pollen (and the acidity of a balsamic and the phenolic compounds in olive oil and everything else), and set off on endless quixotic quests to rescue from the quickening of time the old ways of doing things. My travels took me around the Mediterranean as well as up and down the Eastern Seaboard. From this labor came il Buco, a place that—though I am biased, of course—feels truly magical to me. Like an air bubble or an embassy or dispatch from an altogether more romantic time, it miraculously endures through all of New York City’s constant change. But what is the sum? After all, I know of course that my own house will end up like my father’s: empty of me. I’m sure that just as 47 Bond Street was once an artist’s studio, and 53 Great Jones was once a lumberyard, in the future, they will be once il Buco and once Alimentari. As for me, I started off il Buco as a young woman, a widow, aimless; my story hadn’t yet been written. I’m no longer so young and am aware that this has perhaps been my life’s work. After all, the Greeks called olive oil the elixir of life, but even olive oil won’t save me from mortality. I am lost in thought as I pull into my house. Roberto is standing in the front yard. A copy of Gazzetta dello Sport is tucked underneath his arm; its bright pink newspaper stands out in the lush greenery. He’s wearing his usual uniform: a black shirt and pants, khaki utility vest with a profusion of pockets, and a straw panama hat. He has the same dreamy yet watchful look he’s had for the last twenty years. He waves his hand to greet me, and his eyes soften into a smile.

I climb out of the car and open the door to my home. Inside, the kitchen is already in a state of preparation. Friends from the city are coming, a few neighbors, a couple of new friends too. I am preparing a best-of menu for tonight’s party, developed from years hosting dinner parties like these, smallish gatherings usually at dusk, overlooking some sunset, the more beautiful the better. The menu consists of low-impact dishes that allow me the freedom to actually spend time with my guests. Like most recipes I love, they are exceedingly simple, relying on the quality of ingredients, not the complexity of the preparation. I slice the potatoes for the Fish in Acquapazza and massage a dozen peppers with olive oil, pop my crostata in the oven, and head down to the bay. The temperature is perfect, and I dive in for a quick swim. The cool water is fresh and calming and my mind wanders: What is the sum of these past twenty-five years of il Buco?

Accabonac Harbor, dusk

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Guests gather by the water; Donna arranging flowers; Jill Platner, hand in hand; fairy eggplants in Lana Kova bowl; Roberto tends to wine; anise hyssop margarita

The sun inches closer to the water, and the few clouds in the pink sky become edged with gold. Guests begin to arrive. Some I have known for years. Others I’m meeting for the first time. As they enter, with bottles of wine and bouquets of flowers, we hug and kiss. We head to the back porch for the margaritas with anise hyssop—thank God I found those pitchers—and a few cheeses I brought from il Buco’s cave and some anchovies laid over a slather of Sheena’s fresh churned butter on her buckwheat toast.

Though there is still much to do and much to grill, suddenly this house is full of bonhomie and ease. In a large bowl, cockles soak for the Pasta con le Vongole, and in another, the now-stuffed fish glisten. A stack of terra-cotta plates from Vita await deployment; a case of wineglasses wait to be filled. All of these goods look great in a showroom or in the display of Alimentari, but they look even better at home. This is, after all, where they’re meant to be enjoyed.

Soon enough, it is time to sit down. I’ve sat at thousands of tables in my life, but each time—a new gathering, a new group of people, a new location—I still get a thrill of excitement at the sound of chairs scooting in, the clink of glasses against glasses, the amiable chatter before a feast begins. These moments are pregnant with expectation, these moments made even more precious for they are so fleeting. Yet, perhaps because I know this evening will last only a few hours, I try to let these moments flow through me. I know if I try to hold on to them, I’ll only grow as frustrated as my cat, Keiko, chasing rays of sunlight.

As the sun slips below the horizon, we light a few candles that I had watched Marco hand-dip in Bevagna. Small ramekins on the table hold salt from Massimo in Trapani, the hint of rose now coming out as the sky blazes brilliant pink. A cruet contains olive oil from the groves through which Marco Pandolfi and I walked, and in a narrow-necked glass bottle, balsamic vinegar from Daniela Bertoni whisks me back to Montegibbio. To my left stands Roberto, holding a bottle of vin gris from Rob and Maria Sinskey. The settings on the table before us were made by Carlo and Marta and a host of other artisans. From Bernardo’s hand come the lonza and culatello, and from Sheena’s oven come the loaves of filone she had baked earlier that day. Conversation flows easily and interweaves among friends. The words form a quilt of community. I don’t know what we talk about, but I know we laugh a lot and the night flows lazily on.

Here in the dusk, I find my answer. Each element on the table is a totem for someone whom I’ve met through il Buco. Roberto, whom I adore and with whom I have spent most of my adult life; Alberto, the genius of il Buco whom I’ll always love; all the artisans and farmers and producers, whose fates are intertwined with mine and whose land and labor provide the raw material for il Buco. I feel the table grow and grow so that those feasting around it include not just my friends in East Hampton on this one August night but friends and family and loved ones here and in Italy and Spain, those who are alive and those, like Joe and my dad, who aren’t. They are present nonetheless.

I think of il Buco, the rich warm color of the wood and the soft yellow light that glints off the walls from the flickering candles and Warren’s whimsical chandeliers. I remember countless nights returning home from a weekend out east or a trip across the ocean and walking through that door to find friends and neighbors and acquaintances gathered. Often they’d discover someone they knew across the room, from another time or place or experience. Some are seated here with me right now. This makes me smile.

Tablescape with Vita ware and Jill Platner napkin rings

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Donna, Roberto, Jill, and Scott, East Hampton; dress detail; spaghetti alle vongole; Donna and Joaquin; some favorite wines; Joshua David Stein; scallop ceviche; Lynda Stern and Scott VanderVoort; flowering chives; Keiko in her element

The truth is, I’ve never really considered myself a restaurateur. Il Buco happened in the most unusual, organic way out of the ashes of my past as a filmmaker and the loss of my life’s partner. In short, I follow a life’s quest for fulfilling experiences, formed from and forming relationships with people of various cultures and backgrounds, creatively moving through time and space. I surround myself with objects that bring me joy in their beauty and simplicity, often in their relationship to nature and to respecting her, and to the traditions of the past that endure in spite of the fast pace and evolution of industry. Each ingredient is chosen with respect for its authenticity and flavor and the connection to the people who created it.

That is what it has all been for. That is what it has always been for.

The sum total of my work and my life at il Buco is for this one effervescent moment, and now this moment is gone, and so it is for this one and this one and this one and this one and this one too. Ask anyone who’s been to il Buco and they’ll tell you, it isn’t a place to go or a thing that can be held and therefore a thing that can be lost. It is a feeling, this feeling right now, in the flow of the present, the feast of this very moment.

“We started feeling at home at il Buco during the cold fall of 1994, going almost every night to dine, drink, and celebrate life. The familiar scent, the room full of friends, and that same old great feeling—a marriage for life.”

—GUSTAVO TEN HOEVER

Dusk at home with friends