A Family Business in NYC Italian Restaurants

How did the two of you get into the family business?

FERNANDO SCARPATI: We grew up in New York working for our dad. He, in turn, worked for his father in the business. We worked in different restaurants with our dad until he opened up in Westport, Connecticut. He had great restaurant for 18 years on the water there.

That was Positano, right?

FERNANDO: Right. Martha Stewart was a regular. Phil Donahue, Marlo Thomas. Michael Bolton used to come down all the time. He used to love the spaghetti puttanesca. So we’ve always just loved the business. Finally, we found a good spot in New York City, in Manhattan. And here we are.

What about you, Aida?

AIDA SCARPATI: Ever since I was ten years old, I was working in the kitchen. I liked to watch, and to make desserts. And then I started, like, polishing silverware. Then bussing and serving, bartending, hosting. Really, both of us basically did every position in the restaurant from dishwasher all the way up.

The original Ferdi’s was in the Bronx on the Grand Concourse?

FERNANDO: That’s correct, yes.

When was that place open?

AIDA: From 1955 until about 1967. Our grandfather worked really hard for all those years, and then he went back to Italy.

But his son—your father, Joe—worked at all these restaurants in New York, like the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center.

AIDA: Yeah, that was in 1978. He was executive chef of the Rainbow Room. He came to America when I was 16. He worked with our grandfather and at many restaurants. It’s kind of funny that we ended up where we are now, because he was also working on Carmine Street in the eighties. Right around the corner from us now.

What was the place called where he worked back then?

AIDA: Coco ... Coco Pazzo? Right, Fernando?

FERNANDO: Yeah, Coco Pazzo.

So he worked at all these different places in the city. What made him choose to go to Connecticut to open his first place on his own?

AIDA: He last worked at Giordano Restaurant, at 409 West 39th Street. And after that, he was ready to go out on his own. But opening a restaurant in the city was an expensive endeavor. And so he went into Westchester County. He had a restaurant in Eastchester, New York, and then he found a spot in Westport right on the beach. It was very good area for a long time.

Fernando, you eventually went to work as a chef at Marea, and then spent some time in Italy. What drew you back there?

FERNANDO: I wanted a little bit of my own experience rather than just working for my father. I wanted to see some Michelin-star restaurants. I worked at Marea, and that was cool. Then I had to finish my degree at the Culinary Institute of America. Before I went back to finish, my aunt in Italy—Assunta Scarpati—called me, and she says, “Fernando, I have a great opportunity for you if you want to come and learn here at a Michelin-star restaurant in Naples.”

So I went and I worked there for about a year at Pallazzo Petrucci restaurant. And then I worked with my aunt who has the restaurant A Casa di Assunta on the Italian island of Ponza, where our family is from. After that I came back to the States, finished my degree at the CIA, and worked with my dad. Then Aida and I decided it was time to open up our own thing. 

Aida, in the meantime you worked at Cote in the city, right?

AIDA: Yeah, I worked at Cote. I worked at Perry Street by Jean-Georges Vongerichten. And when I was at Cornell, I worked at the Statler Hotel in Ithaca.

When I was at Zagat, I interviewed Cote owner Simon Kim a couple of times. He’s a character.

AIDA: Yeah he is quite a character. It’s funny that I happened upon that place. It was during COVID, and Fernando and I were figuring out what to do, and we were looking at spots in New York. Meanwhile, I was like, okay, let me start working in the city. I just wandered into Cote one day, and they really needed help. This is when the the labor shortage was still around. And I stayed there for almost a year.

For both of you—what went through your mind when you were considering opening a restaurant with another member of your family, for another generation of the family business? What was your perspective on incorporating that tradition while claiming something new, something more your own?

FERNANDO: Before we opened up Ferdi’s, we had a lot of discussions—like, if we’re going to do this, we have to do it right. We had a lot of discussion about our own personal relationship, how we were going to run the restaurant. We’ve been doing good with that.

We wanted to keep the flavors of my father and my grandfather alive. When I worked in Marea and all these Michelin-star restaurants, the food is very pretty, but I feel like sometimes it’s lacking taste. I don’t see the sauces like in the 1970s and 1980s that my father would tell me about. I’ll never forget how my grandfather made this calamari for me, in red wine with potatoes and bay leaf. It was so good! That’s all we want to keep alive for the people in New York City.

Obviously there’s deep history of Italian and Italian-American restaurants in New York, and then there’s your own family history in the same world.

AIDA: You do have a lot of Italian restaurants in New York, and they all do similar dishes. So what makes our place a little bit more unique and special? It’s what Fernando just mentioned, like why we got into the business—our type of cooking and our traditional way of approaching it. But maybe we try to do a little modern twist by making the dish look a little nicer, serving it with different accompaniments, as opposed to more typical Italian-American style—all those same starches and vegetables.

Have you run into anybody at your restaurant who remembers your dad?

FERNANDO: Ernie Anastos, the anchorman for many years on on Fox—my father used to cook for him at Giordano restaurant. He walked into Ferdi’s one day, and he says “Joe!” when he sees our dad there, who was like, “Oh, hey!”.

AIDA: Yeah, he came into the kitchen, and it was just like a flashback from those times. We’ve had guests who came in to our place who used to go to the the Rainbow Room when our dad was executive chef there. I mean, this was back when Nelson Rockefeller was vice president. They’re probably in their eighties now. New York comes full circle.

How long had you been thinking about opening up a restaurant together?

AIDA: When COVID hit, we were figuring out what to do with our dad’s place in Westport, which we had been managing for about seven years. A restaurateur from Greenwich approached us and was interested in taking over the spot. We said, “You still want to do this during COVID?” And he said yes because we had good terms on our lease and all that stuff. So he took it over, and then Fernando and I were trying to figure out what to do next.

We took some time off that fall of 2021. We didn’t make any moves—just studying the Westchester market, the city market, the Connecticut market, deciding where we could open up in the next year. We toured maybe 200 restaurants in Manhattan, and we found this place in October 2020. We called the number on the window, and it was the landlord who answered. That was nice because we were dealing directly with the landlord and not a broker.

They really liked our story. They liked us. We liked them. I took a while to negotiate a lease. But we wanted to make sure that in such a volatile time, we were stepping into something that if things were to get even worse, we’d be okay. We didn’t actually enter into an agreement until May of 2021.

That’s a long negotiation. Were you able to get the protections you wanted from the lease? Like business interruption or pandemic exception terms, that sort of thing?

FERNANDO: We wanted to make sure our lawyer incorporated that in in the lease so if we got another pandemic, we wouldn’t go broke. We negotiated something that we thought was fair for them and for us. This place required a lot of work. It had been a restaurant for ten years, but the last tenant left in 2017.

AIDA: We had to do a complete gut job. And COVID just delayed everything. Construction, Department of Buildings permits, everything took longer because no one was in the office. So we built extra time and rent abatement into the lease to deal with all that stuff.

So you got some free rent while you were building the place?

AIDA: Yeah, exactly. Sometimes we wished during the construction that we had asked for more! That’s the thing we learned—don’t be afraid to ask for more when it’s time to negotiate. Negotiate hard. That’s what’s going to set you up for success.

Have you had issues with hiring and labor?

FERNANDO: A lot of people say there is a problem with labor, but with us? We didn’t have a problem. I don’t know—I think it’s because we’re really nice. Sure, to find experienced cooks, it’s kind of hard. But we found people who work for the place. They take it on themselves to make sure everything is good and up to par.

AIDA: I can see the problem with labor if you’re an owner who doesn’t work inside the restaurant. We work inside the restaurant—I’m the service director. I manage my staff in the front of house. Fernando’s the chef. He cooks, but he also manages the staff in the kitchen.

So if you need to get a manager, and a bunch of experienced waiters, and the executive chef, an experienced garde manger and sous chef—yes, I can see why that would be a problem, because they demand top dollar, right? And sure, sometimes maybe they’re not exactly worth what they’re asking you for. But we work alongside our staff. We were able to train them. It was hard work, but we were able to find the right people and put them in the right spots.

Any problems with turnover?

FERNANDO: Just with one guy lasted like two weeks, but everybody else has been there since the first day.

How are you dealing with supply chain costs?

FERNANDO: My god, what they’re charging for chicken. We’re buying Bell & Evans chicken, the best on the market. That chicken is so good. But it’s like $5.20 a pound. Before the pandemic, it was like $1.80 a pound. Kansas City prime steak is $27 a pound! It’s so much money. 

How have you managed pricing in terms of passing those costs on to customers? Any reactions to the higher prices?

FERANDNO: That’s a great question. Our father has a lot of experience with this, so he’s able to guide us in the right direction. Balancing the menu so important. You don’t want to just order expensive items, because then your margins are going to be super tight.

People tend to eat a lot of salads, pasta, chicken, veal. We don’t have to charge that high of a price for those, so we can be very competitive in the Village with everybody else. Some items, like Colorado lamb—yeah, they’re a little more expensive. But a dish of chicken on our menu costs like $28, you’re getting the best, and we give a good accompaniment.

Now that you’ve been open for awhile, is there anything you wish you had done differently?

FERNANDO: I think the best thing you can do is hire the right contractors, the right carpenters, even if they cost a little more. But even if it’s more expensive, maybe it’s still not as good. You never know unless they come personally recommended.

What are your plans for the fall and winter?

AIDA: Our space inside can fit about 40 guests. We have a large outdoor sidewalk area because our restaurant has a triangular floor layout. The largest part of the triangle is the windows. We want to extend our outdoor seating to be able to use it in the fall and wintertime. We’re waiting to see what the city says, to find out what we can build.