‘BANGERS’ SERVED AT THIS EATERY
Bullets ‘a message’ to mob-fave spot
Waiter, there’s a bullet in my bolognese.
A mob-linked Brooklyn restaurant may need to check its macaroni and gravy for shell casings after someone shot up the eatery’s facade early Sunday to send a “message” to its owners, according to a law-enforcement source.
An employee arriving for work at Carroll Gardens’ Marco Polo Ristorante just before 8 a.m. found the front window and door riddled with bullet holes, police said.
Co-owner Marco Chirico, whose dad opened the eatery, told The Post that the restaurant was caught in the crossfire between battling gangs from neighboring Gowanus and Red Hook housing projects, but cops said the restaurant itself was the target.
“It’s obviously some kind of message,” a law-enforcement source said of the shooting.
Police recovered 10 shell casings across the street in front of the Body Elite gym.
A worker there said surveillance video captured by the fitness center shows a lone, hooded man stalking around outside around 6 a.m. when the bullets started flying.
The 35-year-old trattoria is a mainstay for players on both sides of the law — judges and attorneys regularly sup at the Court Street institution, but its mob ties run deep.
Wiseguy restaurant owner Joseph Chirico, 73, pleaded guilty to laundering money for the Gambino crime family in 2008.
Chirico copped to collecting $1,500 extorted from truckingcompany executive Joseph Vollaro on behalf of fellow Gambino soldier Jerome Brancato, but dodged jail time after getting character references from former Brooklyn borough presidents Howard Golden and Marty Markowitz — both of whom previously took donations from the mobbed-up restaurateur.
Marco Polo’s broken windows were patched with menus, but the front door still had a gaping hole blasted through it Sunday morning as the eatery prepared to open for business as usual. Neighbors were not surprised. “The thing about Marco Polo and some of the other restaurants is, we know their history,” said one neighbor who asked to have her name withheld. “You always think twice.”
Another neighbor wasn’t put off by the violence, because the dishes are to die for.
“Would I come back here? Yeah, I’d come back. The food here is phenomenal,” he said.