Garafolo

If you were a celebrity in New York during the sixties, chances are some famous eatery would name a menu item after you. The Stage Delicatessen did it, as did many another well known restaurants. Such was my lot that a fine little Italian restaurant in the heart of Little Italy, a “farmiglaria” (which means something like “a place of home cooking,”) named an air conditioner after me.

It happened this way. We were downtown and George Vigiana, my sound man, apologetically suggested that “Il Puglia,” a very modest farmaglaria on Hester Street, was easy on the pocketbook and a gourmand’s delight. He also insisted that the food was inspired. We were in “Little Italy” on some assignment or another and headed for this gastronomic emporium.

Georgie was absolutely right, and he hadn’t mentioned the table wine, which was a buck a bottle and the equal of many in much pricier restaurants. The small, very plain place was presided over by Garafolo Garafolo, the patriarch of the Garafolo family, his wife, who watched him and the customers, and son Joey, who worked like six men and was very devoted to his father.

In those days, television crews frequently changed reporters daily. Since I had a new crew several times a week, and frequent assignments at City Hall, we would show up, have the motorcycle courier pick up the film and dine like Henry VIII, if Henry had been Italian instead of very English. Friday afternoons were the best times and soon other reporters started dropping in because the crew members knew the place and would recommend it.

After a while some police brass came to hear of it from the reporters, as did a handful of politicians who liked to show off their peasant origins. It got so that we would try various excuses, would use any pretext, to get down near Little Italy on Friday afternoon. We would call the desk and tell them we were wrapping a story when in actuality we were already on our second course at the restaurant. It made for warm and wonderful afternoons.

I liked the Garafolo family. They got used to our sometimes raucous ways and everyone was happy, especially after those bottles of wine would appear on the table, the bottles with the labels removed. The next logical step was to improve the house coffee with a little touch of Anisette (they didn’t have a liqueur license) and that’s where I ran afoul of Mama Garafolo. Papa, for some reason, wasn’t supposed to drink, but I would catch his eye when we hoisted the fortified coffee cups, and knew his longing. I felt it was my Christian duty to include him in our small feasts, after all, it was his restaurant’s cooking that was the basis for our enjoyment, that and those wonderful low prices.

Soon belts of Anisette would mysteriously appear in his coffee cup. He would smile, look around to make sure Mama wasn’t watching, then raise his cup in toast to the general company, but his eyes would focus on me.

Now Bobby McCarthy was one of the smartest assignment editors in the business, having spent too many boozy years in the Daily News, he knew the city well. Although no one believes this, he had a sandwich sitting in front of him with one bite taken out. Nobody looked closely but after I saw it for the second time, I realized something was going on. He would raise it to his mouth, then return it to the desk as if he had changed his mind about taking another bite. When his back was turned that second day, I grabbed it and discovered it was soft plastic and contained booze. The means of draining it was a small nipple at the center section of the bite.

Bobby never got caught and it became my bounden duty to bring him at least two bottles of the aforementioned table wine when I returned to 30 Rockefeller Plaza and the newsroom on the sixth floor. Bobby would smile benignly, overlook some of my minor transgressions and peace would rain for at least a couple of hours. Such was life at WNBC TV, CH. 4, in New York in the sixties.

Meanwhile, business was really booming in Il Puglia and both Poppa and Joey felt I had something to do with it. One day I was told that they had decided to name the brand new, rather noisy, but welcome, air conditioner after me. I was bemused and accepted it as an honor, which it was meant to be. Gabe Pressman got a sandwich named after him at a famous delicatessen and even if an A.C. unit wasn’t in the same league, it was something, right?

Well, as I said, business really took off and Joey got in the habit of tucking a bottle of that famous wine under my arm as I left. I always smiled and said thanks and meant it. I didn’t think a dollar bottle of wine would violate my journalistic ethics. I always believed that they made it in the basement with lots of heavy set ladies stomping around in these giant vats. What a romantic. The wine was actually made in Harlem and that caused a lot of talk.

Such wonderful things have their own time and pace and my idyll in Il Puglia was interrupted by the War in Vietnam and a divorce the day after I returned home in late 1968. I went on a terrible, downward slide which bottomed out years later. But I never forgot Il Puglia and was not surprised to hear it had prospered greatly, was triple the size it used to be, and that Poppa had passed on.

Twenty years later, with Lois, my bride of fifteen years, I returned to Little Italy one night and the place was unrecognizable, with huge cars having prestige or government plates crowding local streets. We went in, sat, ordered the still delicious food and I thought back to the wild and wonderful sixties in New York. I was staring at a huge oil painting of Poppa, which dominated the room, when Joey came over, gave me a big hug and I introduced him to my wife and daughters. We both felt the touch of some wonderful years. He spent more time than he should have at our table, talked for half an hour, and left.

As we opened the door, a waiter came over and handed me a paper bag and I knew what it contained. I said, “Grazia,” he said, “Prego,” and I walked back to the car feeling that some things, and some people, don’t change that much and surreptitiously wiped my eyes.

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