FALL OF THE PRIMADONNA
New book tells saucy inside story of McKees Rocks restaurant
On a frigid Saturday night early in 1990, my wife and I decided to venture out and treat ourselves to dinner an out-of-theway restaurant in a dicey neighborhood that had drawn a rave review in the Post-Gazette.
We crossed the McKees Rocks Bridge, drove past sullen buildings, hung a right onto Chartiers Avenue and then another right on Broadway. A few blocks up the empty street we spied a crowd of people milling outside an old brick building.
“What’s going on there?’’ my wife asked suspiciously.
‘ON THE ROCKS: THE PRIMADONNA STORY’
By Maria C. Palmer and Ruthie Robbins Koehler Books ($30.95)
I spotted the stylish “P’’ on the frontdoor awning and said, “That’s it — The Primadonna. That’s the restaurant I was telling you about. They must be customers waiting to get seated.’’
My wife quickly surmised the scene and concluded, “Well, it must be good, because this is the only place in McKees Rocks where there are people on the street and it’s not a crime scene.’’
It has been four decades since The Primadonna stormed the regional restaurant scene, dazzling diners with its dizzying menu of high- and lowbrow Italian dishes — always served up with a free zucchini appetizer. That it was based in a ramshackle railroad town along the Ohio River only seemed to burnish The Primadonna’s raffish charm.
And then, like a meatball rolling off a table, it all went splat. After a stellar 17-year run, The Primadonna was sold in 2002 when its owner and founder, Joseph Costanzo Jr., fell under federal investigation for tax evasion.
Costanzo’s ragu-to-ruin saga is recounted in all its saucy splendor in a tasty new book, “On the Rocks: The Primadonna Story.’’ The co-authors
are Maria C. Palmer, the restaurateur’s daughter, and her writing partner, Ruthie Robbins.
The Primadonna was Costanzo’s monument to himself. Yes, he named it after his wife, Donna, but it wasn’t much of a partnership. Costanzo called all the shots, including on the big financial decisions, often without consulting her.
A Greenfield native and the son of the owner of Le Mardi Gras Lounge in Shadyside, Costanzo was a mailman frustrated with his dead-end job when the owner of a neighborhood eatery in McKees Rocks said he was selling out and moving to South Carolina. Costanzo pounced. He dipped into his savings and bought the joint, despite his father’s dire warnings.
A Falstaffian character with a gift of gab, a knack for promotion and a lust for success, Costanzo harnessed all three to turn that quiet neighborhood eatery into the most acclaimed and popular Italian restaurant in the tri-state area.
Though he loved to eat, Costanzo was always a showman, not a chef. He leaned on his wife, cousin and mother to run the line operation while he handled marketing and front-of-house schmoozing. He would be the restaurant’s public face.
At its peak, The Primadonna, which had a no-reservations policy, kept customers waiting for two hours or more on Saturday nights.
The bar was packed with locals looking to eyeball the local and national celebrities drawn by the restaurant’s positive word-ofmouth: Hollywood types like Jamie Lee Curtis, Danny Aiello and Pat Sajak; visiting sports figures like Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda; local media personalities like Ray Tannehill and Fred Honsberger; and various Steelers, Penguins and Pirates.
Costanzo credits a gushing review from the late Mike Kalina, the Post-Gazette’s restaurant critic, with vaulting The Primadonna into the restaurant stratosphere.
Kalina was the target of a federal investigation for allegedly trying to extort money from restaurant owners who wished to be included in a cookbook. He died by suicide in January 1992. Costanzo called Kalina a friend, and insists Kalina never demanded payments from him.
In the end, the source of Costanzo’s success was also the cause of his downfall: unbridled hubris.
Drunk on his success and popularity, he made the fateful decision to run for Allegheny County commissioner in 1995. Like Sally Field, Costanzo had convinced himself that the public really, really loved him, and that his name alone would beguile voters into turning over the keys to the county to a political novice who bottled a great salad dressing.
Costanzo sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaign, even raiding his wife’s retirement account to fund $50,000 of TV ads in the closing days of the election.
The vanity quest plunged him into financial distress and strained his marriage, sowing the seeds of his destruction. The political debacle left Costanzo strapped for cash. To compensate, he admitted to “robbing Peter to pay Paul.’’
In this case, Peter was the IRS, and Peter was not happy. In May 2002, federal agents came knocking.
Under financial duress and diabetes-related health problems, Costanzo sold the restaurant in December 2002 (but he kept the salad dressing) as his legal problems dragged on.
In October 2004, he pleaded guilty to evading $112,000 in federal taxes. He served five months at a federal prison in Morgantown, W.Va. He was released in August 2005, stripped of his restaurant, his 6,000-square-foot mansion in Robinson, his custom silk shirts from Larrimor’s, and his good name (when news of the IRS investigation leaked, rumors swirled that he was connected to the underworld).
Reflecting on his long, strange trip, the 69-year-old Costanzo remarks in the book that his life feels like a work of fiction.
“The intangibles that enabled me to achieve my greatness also contained the seeds to my destruction,’’ he observes.
“On the Rocks’’ brims with yummy anecdotes served up in bite-sized chapters, but it’s best consumed in one long, sumptuous sitting. Perhaps, with a lush Chianti. Think of it as Feast of the Seven Fishes.