Steve Schirripa Has No Problem With Little Italy, Steaks
In his new cable cooking show, Steve Schirripa’s Hungry (Lifeskool network, debuting December 6), Uncle June’s faithful manservant Bobby Baccalieri tours his favorite New York Italian kitchens and takes some sauce-splattered pointers from pals like Rao’s Frank Pellegrino and Peasant’s Frank De Carlo. Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld asked the man Tony Soprano immortalized as a “calzone with legs” to expound on his favorite pastime — eating on and off the set.
There are a lot of cooking shows out there these days. What distinguishes yours from the competition?
This is a real guy going into a real kitchen; I think after you watch this, you’re really going to learn how to make the meatballs from Rao’s. It’s a combination of talking, comedy, and how-to.
Who does the cooking at home?
My wife; I eat, she cooks. Which is why I’m doing this new show. They’re teaching me how to cook.
In one episode, you spotlight the Mulberry Street restaurant Il Cortile. Do you think that Little Italy gets a bad rap?
I think it does. First of all, it’s a lot of fun down there. There’s a lot of tourists, but Il Cortile is as good an Italian restaurant as any in the city.
Openings
Order Anything You Can Think of at Fabio Piccolo FioreIf you live or work on East 44th Street, it’s very likely that you’ve already been treated to the gracious hospitality of Fabio Hakill and Nick Nubile, owners of the new Italian restaurant Fabio Piccolo Fiore, which opens officially today. To ingratiate themselves to the neighborhood and work out the inevitable pre-opening kinks, chef Fabio served complimentary lunches and dinners all last week, putting his jacketed captains and polished waiters through their truffled-risotto-spooning paces. After serving a ten-year stint at Corona’s legendary Park Side, Hakill, a half-Sicilian, half-Egyptian native of Rome, hopes to make as many fans in midtown Manhattan as he did in the Queens dining room where he met Nubile, the contractor who would become his business partner, and general manager Steve Danz, who left a career in TV sports production to run Fabio’s front of the house.
