Gaga’s fame a burden for parents’ restaurant
‘One tweet and it’s all over,’ singer’s mother worries
The women made a pilgrimage to West 68th Street, 725 kilometres from home, squinting in the rain last week as they peered through the restaurant’s front windows. The place was closed, they were told.
Not a problem, they said. They had come only to glimpse the Mother Gaga.
“That guy’s so lucky,” said Michele Munnery, 21, visiting with two friends from Cayuga, Ont., as she watched a man work behind the bar. “I’m nervous just standing out here.”
This week, in a modest space off Columbus Avenue, Joseph and Cynthia Germanotta plan to open Joanne Trattoria, an Italian restaurant with a well-stocked front bar, a cosy back patio and seating for about 70 people. The venture has been both bolstered and complicated by a simple fact: the Germanottas’ daughter Stefani, better known as Lady Gaga, is perhaps the most famous woman in the world.
“She just generates a lot of sizzle,” Germanotta said of his older daughter, who has worn a dress made of meat and once arrived at the Grammy Awards inside a giant egg.
For now, the owners seem suspended between embracing the attention and distancing themselves from it. Lady Gaga’s few mentions of the restaurant and her appearance at a party there on New Year’s Eve have generated buzz that top chefs could only hope to attract. Art Smith, the chef and a partner at Joanne, met her at a taping of Oprah Winfrey’s show. (Smith was Winfrey’s personal chef for many years.)
Yet Lady Gaga’s celebrity threatens to compromise the low-key tenor of the restaurant, which is billed as a casual neighbourhood Italian spot, like its predecessor, Vince & Eddie’s. If the singer’s followers flock to Joanne, what will matter more: the chicken scarpariello or the woman with the egg costume?
“One tweet,” Cynthia Germanotta said, her blue eyes widening, “and it’s over.”
In an ABC News interview with Katie Couric in November, Lady Gaga said, “My dad and I opened up a restaurant together.” She recalled watching him raise the awning on 68th Street, blocks from where she was raised, and naming the place for his sister, who died of lupus at age 19. Lady Gaga teared up.
“That’s wealth,” she said, placing her hand over her heart. “That’s the dream.”
In fact, Lady Gaga is not an owner, and Germanotta said the family could have afforded to open even without his daughter’s success.
The fare will be Southern Italian, Cynthia Germanotta said, in the sense that Smith is Southern and the Germanottas are Italian. Papa G’s chicken, named for Joseph Germanotta, will most likely be offered. So will an osso buco inspired by his sister, and Cynthia’s salad, after Cynthia Germanotta. Smith has been given free rein to offer a “Southern Sunday” menu each week. Entrees will cost about $25 to $30, Germanotta said.
Renderings of the Tuscan countryside adorn the walls. Near the fireplace at the entrance, family photos hang above a front booth. But the Germanottas said they were unsure whether to include a picture of their famous daughter. Perhaps, Cynthia Germanotta mused, they could find an older shot in which the singer is recognizable only up close.
Joseph Germanotta agreed. “If they’re expecting to come in here and see Grammys and pictures and stuff like that, it’s not going to happen.”
Still, at least one person — besides the three women from Ontario out front, who later searched beneath a parked Ford for any scrap of Gaga detritus — seemed eager for the star’s occasional appearance: the chef, Smith. If, of course, she could squeeze in a visit.
“We have to share her,” he said. “Just like everybody else.”