This was not your ordinary Italian ristorante. Behind its utilitarian black fence and uninspired brick terrace, Da Silvano served more celebrities than Cannes Film Festival, People Magazine, and a Bel-Air rehabilitation clinic combined. On any given night I could look up from my tiny cashier’s desk and count them on two hands. I had just moved to New York and had decided to hit Greenwich Village in search of employment. At some point between Bleecker and Houston Streets, the shabby orange brick veneer and gaudy faux-marble columns drew me in.
“You’re Australian, yes?”
“Yes,” I proudly told the short, eccentric Italian man.
“You have-a the experience?”
“Yes,” I lied into his pink, pig-like face.
“You start tomorrow at 8:15. Bring a nice shirt and tie please, thank you, Australiano. Do not be late.”
Da Silvano was a microcosm of the working world. In the dining room you had your upper-class customers, fashionably chewing rigatoni and slurping Chianti between animated conversation. Bustling around them were the middle-class waiters, charming and smiling until they got to the kitchen, where they would scream military-style orders through a hole in the wall.
The kitchen was staffed by the underpaid, overstrained working class, who were all Ecuadorian immigrants, and from whom I received my very first Spanish lesson:
“Eh KanGOOroo! You say ‘si.’”
“Si!” I chirped, grateful for being inducted into their world.
“No, like this, ‘siiiiiiiiiii.’”
“Siiiiiiiiiiii.”
“OK, good. Now you are ‘pEEnche mariCON puto KanGOOroo’, OK.”
“Thank you, Luigi, I will remember that.”
Free Spanish lessons! I felt so international. If only my friends and family back home could see me now.
The waiters were a mysterious bunch. I never really got to know any of them. On busy nights, the narrow passageway beside me became a white blur of clacking cutlery as they careened impossibly around each other in a stunning, synchronized dance of chaos. It baffled me how they could move so much food, so quickly, and in such close quarters. It was like watching ice hockey, but with teetering trays of veal parmigiana. At the end of each excruciating evening, they would swagger out into Sixth Avenue, $200 in their back pocket, on their way to who-knows-where; although, judging by the subtle limps, giant grins and dark rings under their eyes they sported the next day, it must have been some place pretty good.
Presiding over this mayhem was the owner, and our boss, Silvano Marchetto. Like any good ruler, Silvano was a master of guise. In the dining room he was a debonair entertainer who delighted in teasing his customers so much so that they would compete to be his favourite. On the other side of the cappuccino machine it was an entirely different story. Here, this small, waddling, silver-haired man would transform into a raving, bloodthirsty Tyrannosaurus rex.
Many times while terrorizing the chef to tears in the kitchen, his curdling yells would carry into the dining room, where customers would briefly raise their heads, then resume eating. Silvano worked harder than anyone I have ever met, but in spite of my admiration for him, he gave new meaning to the phrase two-faced fascist dictator.
Our customers were very rich, very famous, and very neurotic. Many displayed the same unique personalities that had made them famous: David Byrne would twitch nervously and glance around the room, trying to see who was watching him; Meg Ryan would complain loudly about men to her gal friends and always tip very poorly; Robert DeNiro would eat with his daughter in concrete silence, while Mariah Carey, who ate with a different man each night of the week, once shoved me out of the way to get into the men’s bathroom. Sarah Jessica Parker was an exception to this rule. In the flesh, she was nothing like her tough, man-devouring character from Sex in the City; and I will always remember her gentle kindness. Each afternoon, hand in hand, she and hubby Matthew Broderick would float happily toward their table where Sarah would make a point of getting to know each of the waiters, busboys, and even this lowly cashier. With her big rosy smile, she would push a nice fat tip into her waiter’s hand and waltz out into the avenue, a generous chorus of ‘goodbyes’ for each of us. Oh, it broke our hearts, I tell you.
Those customers who lacked fame made up for it with sheer wealth and an aching need to display it. One night a young, hotshot attorney had brought in a client with the obvious intention of sealing a deal. After ordering everything on the menu, he asked for our oldest Cristal champagne. Silvano warned him that it might have congealed, but Hotshot insisted.
“DIEGO!”
“Si.”
“Fetcha’ the 1964 Cristal, PRONTO!”
Diego soon returned from the dungeon-like cellar, carrying a pristine-fluted decanter in one hand, and a crusty old green bottle in the other.
“I will take care of it, thank you,” said the young hustler, waving Diego away. A hushed tension fell as he clumsily pried open the $1200 bottle of champagne. The only thing better than seeing his facial expression as the dark brown goo sputtered out into the decanter, was the sight of him drinking it.
On a return visit last year, I dropped in to see how Da Silvano was doing. It had been ten years, and the only differences were Silvano’s new hairdo, his silver Ferrari parked out the front, and a certain sadness in his eyes, which I had seen before in the eyes of trapped animals. We shook hands, said ciao, and I watched him waddle back into the darkened restaurant. That’s when it occurred to me that in spite of all the glamour and excitement of Da Silvano, I was more than happy to be outside of it, in the blinding sunshine of Sixth Avenue.
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