‘Oh my God, Obama’s stopping by for pasta’: can New York’s Carbone survive its own success?
The restaurateur and Queens native Mario Carbone grew up enamored with the atmosphere of old-school Italian American restaurants. From crisp white tablecloths to plates overflowing with red sauce, romantic paintings of Italian cities, and waiters rushing table to table clad in tuxedos while Frank Sinatra standards played in the background, Carbone was fascinated: “I thought it was magic.”
When he decided to open his own restaurant, he wanted to replicate that atmosphere, a place where generations could mark milestones together or escape from their daily lives. It was a decade ago this spring that his restaurant Carbone opened its doors and since then, the New York City eatery has become one of the toughest reservations in the world.
“The list of people I’ve gotten a chance to cook for has been pretty remarkable,” says Carbone’s business partner, Chef Rich Torrisi, with wideeyed enthusiasm. “But when President Obama was still president and he came to Carbone, that was like, ‘Oh my God, the leader of the free world is stopping by for pasta.’” (The 44th president sat at table 45 and ordered a dirty martini.) Snagging a seat at Carbone’s flagship New York location has become a power move that not even the A-listers Justin and Hailey Bieber can always finagle. As was breathlessly reported by the tabloids at the time, they were (gasp!) turned away last summer after arriving without a reservation. (They eventually scored a seat in January when the pop star sold his $200m music catalog.)
Ten years, ago Mario Carbone and Torrisi joined with business brain Jeff Zalaznick to launch Major Food Group. The name was meant to be tongue-incheek since it was originally a barebones operation, starting with the launch of a sandwich shop in 2009 (according to Mario, the sentiment was “let’s be major”.) But the moniker was a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the company grew into a globe-trotting juggernaut of restaurants, hotels and private clubs. In addition to Carbone locations everywhere from Las Vegas to Hong Kong, Major Food Group’s empire encompasses 50 restaurants with a range of cuisine. But its success was built on Carbone, with its old-school Italian restaurant pastina, along with an inherent exclusivity in a relatively small space that regularly lures high-powered diners.
Zalaznick, who energetically answers questions like a macho football coach giving his team a pep talk, isn’t ashamed of the glitzy reputation the brand has cultivated. “We created that culture,” he says of a see-and-be-seen atmosphere, seemingly looking at the operation as less like a restaurant and more like a club. “We understand how to take care of people and create an environment people want to be in. The byproduct of that is a very high-quality clientele.”
Selena Gomez took Brooklyn Beckham and his wife for a night out; Rosalía celebrated her birthday there. Bad Bunny went the weekend of his historic residency at Yankee Stadium, later visiting the night before the Met Gala with Kendall Jenner; two days later Rihanna and A$AP Rocky stopped in. Tony Bennett dined there (that one was a highlight for Mario), and so have Adele and Drake. “When Derek Jeter played his last game as a Yankee, he flew back from Boston that night so he could have dinner at Carbone, too,” Mario recalls. “We had his whole family in and everyone wore Yankees hats and they tipped them to the captain.”
Though Carbone is haunted by the rich and famous now, it wasn’t an immediate success. Italian New Yorkers and food critics were initially skeptical. After all, the trio was relatively young and inexperienced while their prices were eyebrow-raisingly expensive. Think $50 for veal parmesan, long before inflation had taken hold in the US. “It was somewhat spotty in the beginning,” Mario remembers. “The early buzz was, ‘Who do these kids think they are, charging these prices and wearing tuxedos?’ There was a community taking offense that we were trying to act like an older, more established group. But in reality, we were just three native New Yorkers trying to do right by what we were trying to create.”
According to Ian MacAllen, the author of the recent book Red Sauce: How Italian Food Became American, Carbone signified a gentrification of red sauce. “They raised prices and raised the bar, making what had been casual food into something fancy,” he says.
The acclaim for its cuisine popped up in major press right away, most notably from the New York Times food critic Pete Wells. His enthusiastic review (headline: “A red sauce joint steals the show”) put Carbone on the proverbial map with New York trendchasers and the culinary elite, building a foundation for a fervent following. “We no doubt knew we had something special on our hands,” remembers Zalaznick.
According to MacAllen, before Carbone, old-school Italian joints had been slowly disappearing due to food trends and gentrification. As classic spots like New York’s 40s-era Forlini’s close, modern replicas thrive as mini-chains (Carmine’s and Serafina among them). “Carbone entered the restaurant scene at the perfect time to capitalize on the nostalgia of red sauce, the stale copycat ‘authentic’ Italian restaurants, and the shrinking enclaves of old-style Italian restaurants,” MacAllen said.
The space Carbone inhabits was originally Rocco Restaurant, a 90-yearold eatery that closed in 2012 because of a rent hike. Rocco’s was exactly the kind of place the team wanted to emulate, right down to its ageing exterior. (They even kept Rocco’s original sign and affixed a neon CARBONE on top of it, which has since become their trademark; a painstaking duplicate hangs outside their outpost in the shiny hallway of the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.) Mimicking that Goodfellasera style, the restaurant spins a period doo-wop soundtrack, as well as the obligatory Sinatra tune.
Carbone critics bristle over the fact that a truly old-school restaurant where actual mobsters and Marilyn Monroe used to hang out was replaced with a high-priced replica that woos the Kardashians. On the other hand, it’s part of a changing landscape in the cutthroat New York culinary world at large. “Restaurants need to be a sustainable business,” says MacAllen. “If Carbone uses high-quality ingredients and pays their staff fair wages, the price of the food will have to reflect that.”
The mood in Carbone has an undeniable lure. Once guests are seated, an assortment of bread is whisked to their table as they peruse the large, face-obscuring menus. Popular dishes include the spicy rigatoni (a tangy spin on a vodka sauce), as well as meatballs (a mixture of beef, pork and veal, along with the unique addition of onions). It’s comforting, it’s warm – “like going to grandma’s house”, says Mario. They try to re-create that atmosphere everywhere.
Now a decade in, Mario is unfazed by celebrities and press. “It’s what we do at this point,” he says. “We don’t have the celebratory dance at the end zone any more. We’ve been there.” But with that success also comes the danger of becoming stale, and any hot trend has the ability to cool down like a plate of spicy rigatoni that has been out of the kitchen too long.
While Carbone in New York is still a draw, the Major trio has two distinct approaches to fortify the strength of their empire. On one end, they created an even more exclusive experience in Miami: Carbone Beach, a limited run of special dinners in partnership with American Express, which cost $3,000 per person during the Miami Grand Prix.
“There is definitely some mythologizing that happens when a restaurant becomes too popular,” says MacAllen, noting the enduring popularity of Rao’s, located uptown in Harlem. Open since 1896, it’s still the toughest seat in town thanks to a process that eschews reservations; a loyal gaggle of highprofile clientele “rent out” tables certain nights of the week. “The exclusion makes it desirable,” MacAllen says.
Carbone took another page out of Rao’s book for us plebes who can’t land a reservation by releasing a line of jarred tomato sauces available in supermarkets across the US (flavors include marinara, arrabiata and mushroom), all emblazoned with a depiction of Carbone’s signature sign. “We have a brand name bigger than the seats we have, so the sauces came from that amazing problem,” says Mario.
In reality, its location in New York serves increasingly as an emblem for a wider operation. “Great food alone is never a guarantee of success,” says MacAllen. Zalaznick is his typical cheerleading, macho self when describing Carbone’s endurance in a fickle scene. “When things come and go, it’s because the underlying product wasn’t that great to begin with,” he says. ”There’s a difference between being great and being hot. You can be both at the same time, but there’s a difference.”
With any food operation, there’s also a risk of a reduction in quality when once small culinary operations overextend themselves. Zalaznick is also acutely aware of that and insists that he nixes most opportunities that come across his desk. “It’s easy to say no when you have a clear understanding of your brand standards and criteria.” But with Rao’s as a blueprint, Carbone’s cultural cachet could be viable long after the celebrities who frequent it lose theirs.
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The most recent high-profile addition to the sprawling empire is Torrisi Bar and Restaurant, located near New York’s Little Italy in a huge groundfloor space located in the 19th-century Puck Building. It’s the eponymous brainchild of Rich and is an offshoot of the trio’s very first shop, which was much smaller. Here, aside from the main dining room, a secondary large space, presumably for VIPs, lies beyond wooden double doors.
Whereas Carbone is an hommage to old-school Italian, Torrisi’s menu is experimental and elevated. Tonight’s specials include sweet and sour sardines, while long, homemade penne with ramps is a regular offering. It opened in December to immediate buzz. The New York Times, which first elevated Carbone, has already ranked Torrisi’s 33 in its list of the best restaurants in New York City. (The review said “it looks like a set for the hottest restaurant in New York in a movie made by people who don’t live in New York”.) If Carbone is a homestyle Italian joint (or is cosplaying as one), Torrisi is more Copacabana, with well-dressed patrons and an air of class.
Despite its success, Torrisi says helming Major’s latest high-profile concept wasn’t an easy task, especially with the eyes of the culinary world fixed on what the trio would do next. “Doing Torrisi was perhaps the most daunting task of my career, even more than the first time,” he says. It’s a risk that’s so far paying off, and if Carbone is any indication, 10 years in, celebrities and foodies alike will still arrive en masse.