INTERLUDE

GIANFRANCO! GIANFRANCO! TABLE Forty-Six has been trying to get somebody’s attention for ten minutes now.”

We are sitting, Pino and I, where we always sit, at a little table for two at the top of the staircase inside his restaurant, Centolire, near the corner of Madison Avenue and Eighty-sixth Street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It’s an opulent neighborhood, and this restaurant, with its blond wood floors, smartly dressed managers, and sophisticated take on Italian-American cuisine, caters to it perfectly. It’s also the ideal location to talk about Pino’s life because the restaurant essentially encapsulates it: the name Centolire comes from an old song—it literally means “one hundred lire”—and the lyrics are about a young man asking his mother for just that amount so he can go to America. For those who know Pino, the subtext is obvious: he himself came over with scarcely more than that, and now here he is, almost thirty years later, the owner of a restaurant in one of the most well-heeled zip codes in the United States.

Across the table, Pino watches as his general manager, Gianfranco Cherici—an Old World sort with trousers hiked up to his navel, a short, thin tie, and aristocratic face—whispers instructions to a waiter, who walk-runs to the neglected table.

Pino watches until the waiter has spoken to the customers and departed to attend to their needs. He nods solemnly, satisfied for the moment.

“We should probably order,” he says. It’s a superfluous comment because I’ve never sat down with Pino in one of his restaurants and not had lunch or dinner. The years have done nothing to diminish his passion for food and wine, and I often learn that he’s been pondering what we might eat all day long.

“I was thinking maybe we split a puntarelle with garlic and anchovy, and then the lamb stew. It’s very good tonight.”

I nod. “Sounds great.”

Pino rarely orders from one of his waiters, instead waving over Gian-franco and delivering instructions to him in Italian. He does just that, and Gianfranco takes off to personally put in the order. It’s good to be the king.

“Sorry, where was I?”

“You were about to leave for New York.”

Pino takes a sip of wine, and continues.