The chef’s move

This article is published in number 49 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until December 6, 2022

To tell the rise of Mario Carbone, we need to take a step back. Exactly last May, during the Formula 1 Grand Prix in Miami. For the occasion, the owners of Carbone, the ten-year temple of Italian American cuisine in New York’s Greenwich Village, had opened a pop-up under a giant tent on the beach. The price of one meal was three thousand dollars per person. However, in the days leading up to the races, Jeff Zalaznick, cofounder of Major Food Group, the umbrella company that owns Carbone, was decidedly optimistic. «We have never registered such a high number of requests», he commented at the time. “It will be a very hedonistic experience.”
Zalaznick knew his market. During the four days of Coal Beachthe client list was a perfect cross-section of wealth and celebrity: from oil and real estate billionaires to Gen Z Marvel heroine Hailee Steinfeldthe directors Michael Bay And Spike Lee, Derek Jeter, Venus And Serena Williams and still others, such as LeBron James which he had stopped at Coal Beach for four consecutive nights. There were also the dispossessed princelings Ivanka Trump And Jared Kushner to enjoy a rare evening away from the usual dismissive progressives who can’t afford to shell out all those dollars for a dinner. In just four nights, Carbone Beach had made over two million dollars.

How to explain the phenomenon? At the heart of it all is Mario Carbone, an eternal boy from Queens, New York State, who, after working in neighborhood restaurants, in 2013, at the age of 33, opened his eponymous restaurant. Up and down Miami every weekend, where he moved in with his girlfriend, the influential tiktoker Cait BaileyDuring the pandemic, he personally plated rigatoni and threw steaks on the grills while playing politician, receiving VIPs and showcasing his talent.

For months I have been talking to Carbone to try understand how his name has become synonymous with a very specific type of luxury dininghow he and his associates have built and expanded a club capable of attracting in a short time not only the likes of LeBron And Jeter, Spikes And Drake, Jared And Ivankabut tycoons, trendsetters, creatives and influencers of all kinds.
During one of our meetings, I asked him if he and co-founder Rich Torrisi had ever imagined such a success when they decided to open their first Italian restaurant 13 years ago. “We had no idea how it was going to happen,” replies Carbone, “but both Rich and I were willing to bet that we’d make it big before we turned thirty.”
Since restaurants gradually began reopening in the fall of 2020, there hasn’t been a more celebrity-filled place on Earth than Carbone. It’s as if the rich and powerful know no other place to dine.
In the years Carbone has become, if not the only one, one of the few places Leonardo DiCaprio can enter and, perhaps, not be the most famous of those present. He played an important role in fueling the myth of Carbone in the era of the pandemic @deuxmoithe Instagram account that churns out gossip and reveals secrets and behind-the-scenes celebrities.
In the universe of @deuxmoiCoal has become the Deux Magots (legendary Parisian brasserie) of our century, with Kim Kardashian And Pete Davidson sitting at the table instead of Simone de Beauvoir And Jean Paul Sartre.
«I name many different restaurants but, for one reason or another, users think I always refer to Carbone, which is now a synonym for the account», jokes one of the founders of @deuxmoi in a phone call. ‘But aren’t there other places to eat? When someone sends me a photo of their burger or other typically American dish, I get emotional: sometimes it seems to me that I am only publishing posts on Carbone».

There Hollywood version of Carbone’s linguine (with clams). was born just as Instagram was starting to take off. Three months after the restaurant opened, in March 2013, the social platform allowed users to add videos to feeds for the first time.
«Carbone is a sort of film set, where every waiter is like an actor», he says Daniel Bouludwho once hired Carbone and Torrisi in his Café Boulud, renowned French restaurant on Fifth and Madison Avenues. “Mario and Rich are New Yorkers, they miss the joie de vivre of Manhattan.”
When talking about the restaurant, Carbone and Torrisi often come up with a concept they have dubbed «The Move“, the motion. The “moves” are small, almost imperceptible, alluring performances offered by the waiters, which intertwine in a series of deliberately excessive attentions aimed at seducing and bewitching the guests who, invariably, remain captive to the spell of the dish served.
«These are the details of a service with a unique style. It can be our redundant verbiage, how the head waiter guides you through the dishes, the way we present special creations,” says Torrisi. “People probably don’t even notice The Move. That’s exactly the point: you don’t mind because we have captured your imagination. We pour your wine quickly, we serve you a cocktail, you enjoy yourself, and then you’ll be back. This is The Move».

After high school, Carbone decided to bet on cooking: that was the way forward for him. He signed up for Culinary Institute of America, the reference incubator for food stars. «Everyone there thought they would become great starred chefs or great restaurateurs», recalls Carbone. When he was looking for an internship, he applied to a local magazine’s 50 best restaurants, but very few responded. Finally, a call came from a chef from the Dadthe first successful restaurant of Mario Batali. His job was to show up at dawn, scale the fish, bring coffee, say yes to everything, and leave long after the last service. “I had arrived at an incredible place that was making a lot of noise,” he says. «That, at the time, was only Mario’s second restaurant. He was there every night. And I I became the protégé and the jack of all trades. But I was like Rudy Ruettiger in the fucking University of Notre Dame that inspired the biopic Rudy – The success of a dream, the story of a boy who aspires to attend college and play on the school football team despite the thousand obstacles that appear in front of him». Batali asked Carbone to join the team of she Wolf, his new venue on Thompson Street. A year later came a magical contract with Customs, a legend of the culinary art in the province of Lucca, where he learned the ancient techniques of Tuscan cuisine. When he returned to the United States, he thought he had what it took to make it in the kitchens of the chefs who would mark the next two decades of haute cuisine in New York.
The first was that of the most important club of Boulud, who, in Carbone’s parlance, is «one of the LeBron James of food». Carbone had a foolproof plan to get the job: he would personally go to the temple of French haute cuisine and deliver his resume to the chef-owner. He didn’t go like this: to get caught he had to insist, phoning Boulud’s assistant every day. “At first he was very inexperienced,” comments Boulud. Carbone finally managed to find a position at the Café Boulud which, while still a world-class venue, was a little less formal than the four-star Park Avenue dining room.
At the time, the kitchen was managed by Andrew Carmellini, who would go on to open it Green Inn in the Greenwich Hotel of Robert DeNiro, The Dutch in SoHo and the sprawling French bistro Lafayette in NoHo. Boulud fondly remembers the young chefs Carmellini and Carbone at the Café: “They were a bit of a clique,” he says. “They were part of that damned generation ready to do anything to get ahead: they were ambitious kids”.

A 27-year-old regular named Jeff Zalaznick, whom Torrisi and Carbone already knew, offered them, over a glass, to open what would become the largest and most imaginative Italian restaurant the city had ever seen. Torrisi and Carbone were intrigued, and even more, because that was an idea that had been whirling in their heads for some time now. In the lobby of the Jane Hotelthe place that once housed the survivors of the Titanicthe idea of ​​a new type of restaurant was born based on the same enthusiasm that surrounded the Torrisi Italian Specialtiesbut that he took a further step forward, going two steps back. It would not have been an Italian-American place that made use of modern techniques to become super sought-after, but a super Italian-American and at the same time super sought-after place. Zalaznick had one precious thing that his friends lacked: he had been rich for generations. His father was David Zalaznick, co-founder of the real estate and investment company JZ Capital Partners together with financier Jay Jordan. The grandfather was the giant of the real estate market, Paul Milstein.

After meeting at the Jane’s, the three met again at a playground on Mulberry Street and agreed to form a partnership that would grow into the Major Food Group. Among the objectives: to open a restaurant also in Dallas, Texas. “I love the sound of the drill at 2pm on opening day,” says Carbone. “A construction site five hours before opening is the kind of adrenaline we’re looking for.”

On the evening of Carbone’s first service in Texas, the Lamborghini Murciélagos enter the small
Design District shopping centre, their owners casually get out, throw the keys at the valet and enter the cocktail party, which takes place between Carbone and Carbone Vino, a wine bar which, together with Carbone’s main dishes – Caesar salad and rigatoni – will serve , twist, the pizza. Carbone takes out a cigar, looks me in the eyes and lights it while Sinatra caresses
the last high note of My Way. Torrisi is next door, sipping a glass of wine. And then, the final “move”. “See there?” Zalaznick rhetorically asks, dripping on some wine as he gestures in the direction of an empty plaza in the Dallas night. “Right there, we will build our first hotel. L’Coal Hotel».

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