SO LONG TO SOME STREGAS
Nick Varano parts with three of his signature restaurants
Nick Varano is bidding “arrivederci” to a share of his Strega restaurants. After Irish investment group Danu
Partners acquired several of his eateries last week, the local restaurateur has been left with a heaping helping of emotions.
“I don’t even know what to compare it to,” Varano told the Track. “It’s like a puppy. You love your puppy. Then it gets bigger and it’s making a mess, but you’re so attached to it. No matter what he’s ripping up, he’s still your dog.”
“You’d never want to get rid of it and you’re devastated when it gets older because you know you’re going to have to,” he continued. “So it’s absolutely bittersweet.”
Attachments aside, Varano jumped at the opportunity Danu presented him. He signed over Strega Waterfront, STRIP by Strega and Strega Prime as well as four cafes and his catering business to the firm, which also operates fellow Bostonbased eatery Smith & Wollensky. And looking back at the brand he built, he now finds it hard to believe that the risks he was hesitant to take quite literally paid off.
“I’ll never forget when Joe
Fallon came to me,” he said, reminiscing about his reservations about opening Strega Waterfront in 2010. “He said, ‘Hey, Nick, I’d love for you to put a restaurant in this new area, in the Seaport area.’ ”
“I remember looking around and I go, ’Joe, there’s legit nobody here. There’s no roads. Who’s coming? These are parking lots,’ ” he continued. “You have to remember, there was nothing on those three streets. Not a building.”
Varano said that Fallon assured him that the thenundeveloped area would soon be unrecognizable. And with the encouragement of his wife, Michelle, and two children, Nico and
Marina, he went for it. “I went, ‘You know what? Let me take a shot. Let’s see what happens. These guys are much smarter than me. They know what they’re going to be doing around here,’ ” he said.
As we Bostonians now know, the Seaport exploded, with the food pioneer firmly planted on Fan Pier. Varano continued to roll the dice, first expanding his brand to the suburbs with Prime in Woburn in 2013 before setting up STRIP at the revamped Park Plaza in 2015. And with each new restaurant, Varano said that his only goal was to make his customers feel special and his family feel proud.
“Whenever someone would ask me, ‘What do you want someday your legacy to be?’ I said that the only thing I ever cared about was that 50 years from now, when Nico and Marina walk down Hanover Street, they can say that their father was a good guy,” Varano said.
“All I cared about was making them proud,” he added. “Like, ‘He quit school in the ninth grade, but he went and made us proud.’ So their dad wasn’t just a bust-out. ‘He maybe didn’t graduate, but that’s OK. He never said no to anybody. That’s my dad.’ ”
Amidst the Danu Partners deal — the terms of which remain undisclosed — Varano will retain three of his restaurants. He’ll still be holding on to Strega North
End, which will now be called Strega by Nick Varano, as well as the two spots named after his kids, Rina’s
Pizzeria and Nico.
“This one here, they’d have to pull it away from me,” he said of his North End establishment. “It’s the original. It’s where I started. … It’s my legacy and my neighborhood. There’s nothing like waking up and being on this street every day.”
“But more importantly, I really need a place where I can eat and don’t have to pay,” he laughed.