Mario Carbone
speaker
319 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Mario Carbone’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
What are you trying to do here? You know, there was that, especially from the older generation. So we had to kind of push through that. So you had immediate almost rejection. We had a bit of rejection from like the food community. Not necessarily the patrons, but the journalists, certainly the ones that had been around a while and seen a lot of shit. And you were their darlings.
Because we were acting older. Yeah. We had guys like him in tuxedos. We would put fake ads in newspapers and Craigslist to hire old school waiters because I didn't want kids. We created a fake steakhouse for them to respond to because those are the style of restaurants that they want to take jobs in. Yeah. And so I got old school guys to come in and, and respond to those ads.
And then I told them what we were doing and put them in tuxedos, play the old music, do the old vibe, you know, cause everything in 2013, everything was this big. All the food was this big. The trend was 20 course tasting menus. And we were doing, we were, we were going completely against that. And to do that in our, in our 30 years old was, didn't make any sense to anyone for a minute.
And it took a little bit of time. And then we got to the New York Times review. We got an incredible New York Times review. Before that, it was the price point that they were frustrated by? It was that we made such a big leap that it caught people off guard.
The same person that was applauding me a couple months ago down the block in that little place was like, wait a minute. What'd you just do?
So... To know that we were putting ourselves out there in that way and to have that be the initial response. Again, we were getting traction on the ground. People were enjoying themselves. The vibe in the restaurant was good. I was just worried a little bit at like the community at large. And it took a kind of a flag being planted by the New York Times to say, no, this is accredited.
This belongs here. So New York Times comes in and thwarts all the other criticism. They basically wait to be the last one. So in a big review like that, the New York Times will take that position and they'll wait for New York Magazine and The Post and all the other publications to weigh in. And then they'll go last.
Because no one's ever really thrown a critic out. Wait, what happened? I wasn't... Again, young and a little spicy at the time. But the critic at the time for New York Magazine had come in and he wrote a really poor review. And I just didn't like the way he went about it. And I was also young and sensitive. And I didn't like the review. I didn't like the way he went about it.
What do you mean you didn't like the way he went about it? I remember he brought in other chefs to sit with him. And I didn't think that was cool to review it. And I thought he had an agenda. I thought he didn't like it from before he even sat down. He never gave us a chance. So he wrote this pretty terrible review. And then we had a little bar down the block.
And he tried to go to that bar a couple weeks later. And he's supposed to be anonymous, but I know who he is. And he shows up and we threw him out. And that became a whole thing because no one's ever done that. And in hindsight, probably I wouldn't have done it again. But that's how I felt at the time.
I appreciate the ones that do real homework, that come with real, like, either they've been in the business a really long time, but you can tell that the way they go about it, the way that they research it, whether they like it or not, it comes from a real place of understanding. And at that point, you can't, you can't, you can only say so much.
You know, there's a couple of critics. There's one named Ryan Sutton, who is a really, really bright journalist who knows his shit inside and out. And sometimes he's written really beautiful reviews for us, and sometimes he hasn't. And if I look back at the ones that he was more critical of, they are some of the projects that I think needed more work than others.
I think he was probably right about them.
That simple.
You tell a joke and you know... You know right away. Like, I deliver the plate and it's gone. Like, did you like it or not? And you ate it or no? Like, it's instant gratification. Yeah. Which is just beautiful, right? And, like... It disappears. You make something, it's a disappearing art. It goes on a plate and it's consumed and it's gone.
Carbone was a very intentional project. sort of celebration. It's an Italian-American restaurant, right? So it immediately doesn't exist in the country of Italy. It's born and raised in America, like I am. So if you start to look at it and you're telling a story, and for me, restaurants are most closely similar to theater.
You build a stage, you're telling a story, you're in costume, you're trying to make this believable play that starts at the exact same time every day with the same cast in same uniform for a different audience. It's theater. And you're trying to create something that's transportive. I want to take you somewhere. And in Carbone's perspective, it's first generation Italian Americans.
So I say it's Michael. It's not Vito. Right. It's Michael. He struggles with Italian. Right. In the movie. Right.
He can speak it a little bit, but it's not his native tongue. He's born in New York, right? This is a thing that's born in New York. It's really not recognized. It's not understood by Italians. It's our thing. So when did that take place? If you think about the Godfather movie, the first reference is Louie's Italian-American restaurant where he kills Sollozzo. That's the 40s and 50s.
So that's where I wanted to set the restaurant to that period. So then I start thinking about, okay, if it's 1950 New York, What's the music? What's the uniform? What's the menu look like? What's the server look like? What is this? Because I want you, the customer, to walk into it.
Showing 121–140 of 319 · page 7 of 16
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