A tribute to Rosemary Clooney

Today marks 9 years that Rosemary Clooney passed away - it's amazing to think that so much time has passed since a great friend of ours left us.

Some time ago, we had a tribute put up on Rosemary Clooney's site. Since this is the anniversary of her passing, it seems appropriate to repost it.

http://rosemaryclooney.net/remembering/tribute/#patsys

It's a great read, so you should definitely check it out, but there's one part I'd like to quote because it sums up our relationship with her particularly well. It's from Anna (my Meema);

""Rosemary started coming to Patsy's when she first got to New York. My father took such a liking to her, he told her when she was struggling to find work, that she could have a meal here anytime. He said to her, 'someday if you could pay me back when you make it, then you pay me.' She was part of our family and we've lost a dear friend. She referred to me as her sister, even when she signed my copy of her book, she signed it, 'To My Sister Anna." 

Sal with Rosemary, one of the many, many times she visited the restaurant

Sal is coming to Atlantic City!

Just wanted to give you all a quick update about our July 4th plans. As you may already know, we'll be closed July 4th and 5th - this follows a long-standing tradition where we always take off on July 4th to spend time with the family. It's a great opportunity for us all to take a family vacation together, and my parents even got married during the July 4th break!

That said, if you were looking forward to getting some Patsy's during the holiday, you still can! In fact, Sal will be going up to Atlantic City, and will be cooking in Patsy's AC on July 3rd and 4th! If you'll be visiting AC, then you should definitely stop by the restaurant while Sal's there!

In fact, that's not the only thing going on in Patsy's AC. We've actually got several exciting events going on - as soon as the information on them is finalized, I'll post them here!

~ Paul

Patsy's, Vinvino, and Antinori - it runs in the family!

Here at Patsy's, we pride ourselves on being a family business - but we're not the only ones! In fact, it's not uncommon for us to work with other businesses that have also been run by the same family over many generations. Two such families are the Giachino family, which runs Vinvino Wine, and the Antinore family, which owns an orchard in Italy. Giachino's got 5 generations of family running it (meaning they've got one more than us), but Antinore has us both beat - they've been around for 625 years, and right now are on their Twenty-Sixth Generation. That's impressive.

Gus Giachino of Vinvino (middle), Renzo Cotarella of Antinore (right), and my father, Frank DiCola, of what else - Patsy's!

Being an Italian Restaurant, it's natural that we offer Italian wines. We've done business with Vinvino for many years, as they're a distributor that directly sells us the wines. Since the Antinore wines are one of their best offerings, we've bought a lot of them over the years. So, when Vinvino organized a wine tasting in NYC that was featuring a new line of Antinore wines, we knew we had to check it out! I went there with my dad, and not only was the wine great, but it was a pretty valuable learning experience.

The different wines they offered at the tasting.

Wine is interesting - it's one of those products that most people are aware of on some level, but very few are widely knowledgeable about. When my dad first started seriously working at Patsy's, however, he noticed that the wine list was pretty sparse, so he's done a great job of bolstering it over the years (we now offer over 300 wines, and my dad's made sure that all of them are great!)

Naturally, this meant that when we went to the wine tasting, he explained a lot of terminology to me. For example, several of the new wines being offered from Antinore were being called "Super Tuscans". I had no idea what this meant, and figured it was just a fancy name, but my dad filled me in, and it's actually pretty interesting. Apparently, there's official naming conventions when it comes to wine, and if you want to call your wine by a certain name, you have to use specific kinds of grapes. A Chianti wine, for example, is a blend of mostly red grapes, but if you want to call it Chianti you need white grapes as well. Some time ago, Antinore was preparing some new Chianti wines and wanted to try making them with only red grapes. As per the rules, they were allowed to do this... but they couldn't call the resulting wine Chianti. So the term 'Super Tuscan' was formed, and it's become a blanket term that describes any Italian wine that doesn't fall under standard naming conventions for wine.

Pretty cool, huh?

Gus briefly describes the next wine we're about to taste

The theme of the event was that either Gus or Renzo would get up and run us through what they'd tried to do with the wine we were about to taste. It'd be poured, and some food would be brought out that complemented it. This was by far my favorite part of the event - the wine alone was great, but combining it with the perfect kind of food was phenomenal. For example, we had a deep, rich red wine near the end of the meal, and to complement it they brought out a delicious piece of filet mignon. Truth be told, I wasn't even aware we'd be getting food at this event, so I was loving it.

A really tasty appetizer - breadsticks wrapped in prosciutto. I'm thinking we should try this at Patsy's! 

All in all, the best thing about the event was seeing all these great family businesses come together. Vinvino's got a fascinating history, because it's been around for over 100 years, meaning that the company endured prohibition and the ever-changing landscape of wine distribution in NYC. Getting to talk to the 26th generation CEO of Antinore felt like a priveledge - I can only hope that Patsy's gets that far! It's great to see how the younger generations admire those that came before them and paved the way for their own success.

The youngest members of Vinvino and Patsy's, respectively

~ Paul

Sal and Father Jim make Panettone Pudding!

Last week, Father Jim came into the restaurant with a big group of people from Telecare. Naturally, they'd come to eat, but Father Jim and Sal had a special surprise for everyone - they prepared dessert right in front of them!

It was a fun night, and to start things off, Sal gave a great intro that really sums up his life at the restaurant. You can check it out in this video:

After that, it was time for the food! As Sal explained, Panettone Pudding is a great dessert to make if you find yourself getting one too many Panettone fruitcakes at Christmastime. Don't get me wrong, they're good - but you can only eat so much! Luckily, they almost never go bad, which means that whenever you've got some free time, you can try out a bunch of creative recipes that put those excess Panettones to good use. Panettone Pudding is one such recipe. As the video below illustrates, it's an incredibly simple way to turn a Panettone that you might never get around to eating into a dessert that you won't be able to get enough of! For instructions on how to actually make the pudding (or just to watch Sal and Father Jim making it), see this video:

And in case you're wondering, I'm the one that did the filming! It was my first time filming something like that, and I'm pretty sure I did a terrible job, haha. At least the pudding came out nicely, though!

~ Paul

Remembering Anna

(May 5th, 1924 - April 7th, 2004)

                                                                                                          

I’ve written a lot of blog posts for Patsy’s at this point – some of them have been personal, discussing the lives and legacies of various family members, while others have been more general, talking about celebrity appearances or food specials. This post I’m about to share with you now, however, has by far been the most difficult. It’s not because I don’t have a lot to say about Meema, because I do… but it’s difficult to write about her, because I want to make sure that I properly honor her memory.

To provide some background, Meema was a name that my brother and I affectionately called our Grandmother, whom many of you knew as Anna DiCola. (We weren’t the only ones who had a special name for her – my cousins John and Ashley called her “Grandma Roni”). Regardless of what name you knew her by, one thing is unanimous across everyone that met Meema; they all loved her.

She was born in Italy, and was the oldest of Patsy’s children. In fact, when Patsy’s opened in 1944, she was already 20 years old! If you remember Uncle Joe’s blog post, you’ll remember that he started working at Patsy’s as soon as it opened – the same was true for Meema. Even though she was 20, money was extremely tight in the early years of the restaurant, so she worked without pay. However, her parents said she could keep any money that she got from the coat-check room, which meant that in the winter she’d make a nice bit of money, and during the summer she’d pray for rain whenever she was running low on cash. : )

Meema continued to work after getting married, but stopped once she had her first daughter (Marie). At this point, the restaurant had really taken off, and she was able to focus on raising her family. Unfortunately, her marriage wasn’t perfect and eventually she divorced, but she remained a loving, faithful mother, and dedicated herself fully to her children.  

                                                         From left to right, that's Connie, Marie, and Frank, and on the bottom is Annie!

Once all of her children had gotten married, she returned to the restaurant and continued working (after raising four kids, it was probably relaxing!) Those of you who knew Anna probably met her at this point in her life. Being a phenomenal mother and grandmother, she had a very matronly aura, and everyone who came into the restaurant instantly liked her – many came to love her as if she was part of their own family, including some of our workers! One bartender who was with us for many years, Rocky, had lost both his parents when he was very young. He considered Meema a mother, and in his difficult life she was a constant source of comfort.


She had a great relationship with any customer that walked through the door, and considering how many people she interacted with on a daily basis, had a suprisingly good memory when it came to recognizing customers who'd been in before. Naturally, some were easier to remember than others - her favorite repeat visitor would have to be Rosemary Clooney! Any time they were together in the restaurant, they'd always ask how each other's children (and eventually grandchildren!) were doing, swap stories, and catch up.

                                                              Meema, Joe and Rose with Rosemary Clooney and Dante one night at Patsy's!


Meema really was the perfect grandmother; warm, cheery, constantly cooking, always smiling. She loved coming to the simplest events, like grammar school plays or sports events, just to see her grand-children flourishing. She also loved spoiling us – there was a bakery down the street from her apartment, and whenever we came over to her place or she stopped by our house, she always brought a box of cookies. When I say a box, I don’t mean a little thing with five or six cookies… this thing was PACKED! Great cookies too, including everyone’s favorite among my cousins and I: the legendary ‘rainbow’ cookie. I’m not really sure exactly what it was made of, but the top was chocolate, and then there were three layers (separated by jam) with the colors of the Italian flag in them. If you’ve ever seen these:



…then you know what I’m talking about. For whatever reason, they were unbelievably delicious, and whenever we got our patented Box O’ Cookies, the rainbow cookies were the first to go.
The cookies were just the beginning, though. Meema always had something cooking in the kitchen. She could make anything taste phenomenal. To this day, I’ve never had a meatball from any restaurant or home kitchen that tasted as good as hers, and she’d even take something mundane like string beans and make them delicious, dressing them up with sauce, potatoes, etc.

Meema’s true love really was her family, and while she enjoyed watching us grow up, I think she took sincere pleasure in seeing us spend time together. For this reason, we started a tradition where we’d go on a family vacation every year. As a little kid, this was one of the most exciting highlights of the year, right up there with Christmas and my birthday. The vacations usually lasted ~4 days, during which time I'd hang out with my cousins and brother the entire time. It was pretty great, because all of us cousins have always been really close, so even getting to do simple things with them, like eating dinner or watching movies, became so fun. While I didn't appreciate it at the time, it must've been really satisfying for Meema to be able to watch us all spend time together. She hadn't had the easiest life growing up, but all her hard work as a young woman and a single mother had paid off because she'd raised four great kids who became four incredible parents.

It's this devoted, extensive love that's so easy to take for granted, but that's the kind of love that Meema had for all of us. It really was heart-breaking when she passed away, but we were able to take solace in the fact that she had left nothing unfinished. She not only got to see her children grow up, but was also able to help them in raising their own children. She truly had a satisfying, fulfilling life, and while it was incredibly difficult for all of us to say goodbye, it's impossible for us to ever communicate how much we truly loved her, and how much she did for us. 

She always said this was her favorite picture!

 

~ Paul

Visits from Connie Francis and Ernie Anastos!

The weekends are always busier at Patsy's, but this week was particularly exciting because we had visits from two celebs! Both Connie Francis and Ernie Anastos stopped by over the weekend! We're always happy to see both of them, although Sal was on vacation so he wasn't able to hop into the photos.


                                                                                                     Frank and Joe with Connie Francis!





                                                              Frank and Joe with Ernie Anastos

We often joke about how Ernie and Frank are twins. In this picture, you can really see it - aside from the hair, they really look a lot alike! Who knows, maybe Frank should try his hand at being a news anchor and see if he's got some hidden talent we never realized!

You can actually tell that Sal wasn't here because of the photo quality. It's a little pixelated, which never happens with any of Sal's cameras. For those that don't know, Sal's actually a MASSIVE photography buff. He's always buying the latest in camera technology, and you can see the difference if you leaf through the blog and compare pictures he's taken to pictures someone else took.

It's always a fun time at Patsy's, regardless of who comes in!

~ Paul

Easter Traditions

While we've been preparing for Easter (both at the restaurant and in our personal lives), we've been reflecting on some of our older Easter traditions. A couple days ago, my dad actually told me about something the restaurant used to do that totally took me by surprise!

As you know, we've got a special menu planned for Easter. I'd blogged about it recently, and you can find the full details on our menu page, but did you know that alongside the lamb, pizza rustica, and cheesecake, we used to have a fourth special item? Believe it or not, it was goat!

Goat's actually a very traditional easter food, but as the years have gone on, it's fallen out of style. This is due mostly to the fact that people only raise goats for very specific purposes, such as cultivating goat cheese. That said, Patsy's used to have a goat special every year on Easter. It was succulent, and people always marveled at how tender the meat was and how unique it tasted.

Since cooking goat was such a rarity, we made sure to make use of as much of the goat as possible - including the head! Yes, this is the part that shocked me... apparently, the head of a goat is considered a delicacy, and every year Concietta would be the one to eat it! (I guess she was the only one who wanted it, haha).

Serving goat may not be a part of our Easter offering anymore, but you can be sure that having a meal at Patsy's during Easter is still a treat! If you're interested on a full run-down of all the specials, check out our menu page or scroll down a bit to the blog titled "Patsy's Easter Specials!" Regardless of how you choose to celebrate Easter and who you celebrate it with, I wish you all a happy Easter!

~ Paul