I took my first steps on Mezzaluna’s terra-cotta floor. Our restaurant, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, had already been up and running for over a decade by the time I was born. My father, Aldo, opened its doors in 1984, selling salads and carpaccios at a moment when the New York dining landscape was divided, as one critic put it, between old-style red-sauce spots and fancy Frenchified salons with menus the size of a small-town phone book. Carlos and Nicky, members of the staff, were among the first people to visit me at Lenox Hill Hospital.
It’s no surprise that I started pre-school without speaking a word of English, because my first language was learned in that dining room: a mix of Italian, Spanish, and the shorthand of a busy service. At three, I stood behind the bar shouting, “Vino, vino, vino!,” at the top of my lungs. I poured iced tea and hung coats along the narrow staircase that doubled as a coat check. I ran my fingers along the labels of wine bottles before I could read them. The restaurant became the architecture of my childhood.
