Where John and Yoko Went for cannoli

ON THE DAY THAT Cafe La Fortuna opened on the Upper West Side in 1976, business was slow. “We sold one espresso and made exactly 85 cents,” says Richard Urwand, son of the café’s late owners, Alice and Vincent Urwand. “We thought, What the hell did we just do? But I guess someone liked that one espresso enough to tell someone else, and before we knew it, people started coming in.” Eventually, word spread to the two most famous people in the neighborhood (and arguably the entire world): John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who lived a block away at the Dakota.

Cafe La Fortuna, which was best known for its sandwiches and Italian desserts, became the couple’s regular spot. “They used to come in a few times a week, him more than her,” says Urwand. “He would sit at the same table in the back garden, write, and draw on napkins. Sometimes he’d order a sfogliatella or cannoli.” The cover of Lennon’s posthumous 1984 single “Nobody Told Me” features a photo of him and Ono at the café with the former Beatle about to dig into what appears to be a sandwich. They ate breakfast there on the day of his murder in 1980.

Urwand says the pair came to Cafe La Fortuna because the regular customers knew enough not to bother them. They were social with the staff, though. “I remember one time John said he was thinking about going to Florida but he didn’t like it down there because of the mosquitoes. Another time, he and Yoko brought Sean, who was only a couple years old. They had to run out to do something quick, so they put Sean in my lap and said, ‘Hang on to him for a bit. We’ll be right back.’ ”

Cafe La Fortuna closed in 2008 after the building changed hands and the landlord raised the rent. Alice Urwand died that year, followed by Vincent in 2014. Their son remembers his parents hit it off with John and Yoko and ended up becoming good friends: “Which was funny because my father liked opera. He used to say the Beatles were the devil’s music.”