From F&D’s Summer 2023 issue, our 20th Anniversary compendium, comes this profile of Vincenzo’s Italian Restaurant (downtown at 150 S. Fifth St.) Read it at the issuu link, and at some point when time allows, we’ll post the article in text and photos here at the website.
I thoroughly enjoyed writing and researching the Vincenzo’s profile, but the best part of it for me was meeting the legendary Gabriele brothers for the first time. What a treat! Here are two brief excerpts that to my mind summarizes what the brothers have brought to the collective area table for these many years.
Leave it to co-owner Vincenzo Gabriele to remind us that mercurial celebrity is only a pleasant coincidence when it comes to longevity in the restaurant business. “My father used to say the most important thing in hospitality is sincerity,” he says. “We treat everyone as if they are a guest at our family’s table.”
And:
Today, after a lifetime of achievement, when Agostino Gabriele is asked what is meant by Italian cuisine his answer doesn’t cite recipes; rather, he recalls what he learned from his mother as a boy: “Fresh meat, never frozen; fresh vegetables, cooked fresh, every day—the tomato sauce and stock, fresh every day.”
Diana and I are celebrating our 19th wedding anniversary today. Last week she suggested we have lunch at the last eatery I wrote about for the magazine, and so we’ll be off to Vincenzo’s for a special lunch today: Old world ambience with my sweetheart, a big midday meal, a glass or two of wine, and an afternoon pennichella prior to evening festivities.
In short, our idea of a fine time.
(This post might well be updated later with photos from the anniversary lunch.)
