Choke & rob of Da Silvano restaurateur

FAMED restaurateur Silvano Marchetto was choked so hard that his trachea was fractured in a Greenwich Village attack by two men, police sources said Monday.

“It still hurts,” Marchetto, 70, told the Daily News. “I have a broken soft tissue bone in my neck.”

The incident occurred at 12:30 a.m. on Sunday in the lobby of the Sixth Ave. building, near W. Houston St., that housed his restaurant Da Silvano until it closed after 41 years in December.

Sources said the goons followed Marchetto into the lobby.

They grabbed him around the neck in a chokehold, then flung the victim to the ground.

They fled with his wallet, which contained $1,800 in foreign currency.

Marchetto went on his own to the nearby Lenox Health Greenwich Village emergency department.

He was transferred Sunday night to Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side.

At that point, police were called about the attack.

They are looking for video that could help identify the suspects.

Marchetto made his mark on the New York restaurant scene in the mid-1970s with the opening of Da Silvano, one of the first restaurants to serve northern Italian cuisine at a time when most Italian restaurants served an Americanized version of the food.

Bold-faced names like Madonna were a staple at Da Silvano, until skyrocketing rents — more than $40,000 a month in the past year, according to reports — forced Marchetto to close the restaurant.

Other celebrity diners included Anna Wintour, Sean Penn, Katherine Heigl and Owen Wilson.

Marchetto is also in the process of getting divorced.