by Mauro Suttora
The New York Observer, February 25, 2006
Want to go to Cipriani?"
"Which one?"
"Downtown."
"Girls too flashy and young with men too old and ugly… I prefer the Cipriani on 59th Street."
"But that’s closed for renovation."
"A real pity."
My American girlfriend Marsha loves Cipriani, as long as it’s uptown. After she comes to pick me up at the Rizzoli bookstore on West 57th Street, she takes the so-called Bergdorf shortcut: enters on 57th Street, and gets out on Fifth Avenue. Sixty seconds, enough to lift her mood before crossing the Avenue to the restaurant.
I fancy everything Cipriani. It makes me proud of being Italian. "Ciprianesque" has become a new word in the American dictionary, meaning a peculiar kind of 21st century "dolce vita" happening at the eight restaurants and gala halls that Arrigo (Harry) Cipriani and his son Giuseppe own in Manhattan.
At 72, Harry is more New Yorker than Venetian. The legendary Harry’s Bar his father opened in Venice just off St. Mark’s square in 1931 - with clients such as Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, Orson Welles and Peggy Guggenheim - is the only one he keeps in Italy, together with Harry’s Dolci. Cipriani is today a $150 million world empire, with Hong Kong and Sardinia offspring.
But "nemo propheta in patria", no one is a prophet in his own land, and Cipriani senior is more revered in New York than in Venice: this year his city has turned down his mayoral candidacy, drowning in the usual parochial squabbles ("Baruffe chiozzotte", named them playwright Carlo Goldoni). No "doge" Cipriani, then: just emperor of the main industry (food and entertainment) of the main city in the world. Because a big slice of the Big Apple’s night life, twenty years exactly after they arrived in Manhattan, now belongs to them.With Le Cirque and the Plaza gone, more galas are flocking to their locations: the Rainbow Room on top of the Rockefeller Center, Cipriani 42, Dolci at Grand Central Station, the new Cipriani 23 in Madison Square, and Cipriani Wall Street (the former Regent Hotel), where they hold benefit concerts by Rod Stewart, Sheryl Crow or Beyonce with De Grisogono jeweler, and sell residence condos upstairs with the Witkoff Group, which is also their partner in the grandiose project of turning Pier 57 at 15th Street into the largest gala hall in America.
The "Ciprianesque crowd" is made up of glamorous girls and tanned men, simultaneously envied and despised by the old-money New York establishment. But this is not Cipriani’s only contribution to modern world vocabulary: Bellini (the cocktail) and Carpaccio (sliced raw beef), the two staples on their menus, are three-quarters-of-a-century-old.
"Did you copyright them?" I ask Harry Cipriani.
"Why should I?" replies the old libertarian, who hasn’t even bothered to secure the property of the name "Harry’s Bar" - so that the one in Florence pays royalties to the Paris one, and also the one in London has nothing to do with him.
"We are not jealous and have no secrets: we are even selling to the public our Bellini peach juice in cans."
It’s easy to obtain the classic Cipriani recipe: just add one part of prosecco (the sparkling Italian white wine) to three parts of the base juice, plus three ice cubes.
Harry is open to innovation, though, and he himself suggests variations: "Try ‘Sweet Emy’ with gin replacing prosecco and an orange slice, or ‘Sweet Maggie’ as an after-dinner with rum and a mint leaf, or ‘Sweet Annie’ with vodka".
And everybody knows the other Italian operatic "inis" born in the wake of Bellini: Puccini with tangerine instead than peach, and Rossini with strawberry. I even met a "Strawbellini" once...
Whatever the drinks and the food, Cipriani serves them exactly the same way all over the world: his tables are always low, the wooden chairs as uncomfortable as in Venice, and the cutlery smaller than normal. Even glasses are scaled down: "My father wanted them like that, to please the customer, and I didn’t change anything," says Harry, who got a law degree, has written five books and is a karate black belt. He could have practiced a few months ago, when a group of leftist no-globals stormed into Venice’s Harry’s Bar, ate a hefty meal and disappeared without paying, leaving a note: "Charge NATO. No war in Iraq." Cipriani made the news because, in a bout of anger, he declared that his absent-minded waiters would have to pay the bill. After a few minutes he pardoned them.
He is still angry, though, with some restaurant critics: "Come back without a condom on your tongue," he replied to a bad review in the New York Magazine. And to the London Zagat guide, which has accused his London restaurant of being "good only for tea," he retorts: "After your put-down, I am serving 400 meals a day: please go on..."
Please Marsha, leave your Upper East Side fief and come to West Broadway: let’s enjoy life at Cipriani Downtown.
Mauro Suttora is the U.S. bureau chief of Milan's weekly magazine, Oggi and a New York Observer columnist.
