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| Nino Pernetti, owner of Caffe Abbracci, has written a book about his life, his travels and his Coral Gables restaurant. |
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Caffè Abbracci's owner recalls his colorful career
BY FRED TASKER |
Sylvester Lukis, lobbyist for Miami-Dade County and other entities, explains why Nino Pernetti's Caffè Abbracci has survived for nearly 20 years in South Florida's tough restaurant market.
``I've brought governors, senators, mayors here for years. They always treat us like family. It's almost like a Goodfellas thing.
''And it's generational,'' Lukis adds. Once a young friend told him he had a heavy date and asked if he could set him up for some good treatment at Abbracci.
``I called them, and they treated him like a prince. I think he scored that night.''
Pernetti revels in the story and in the oft-heard comment that once you've dined at his place, he will forever remember your name, your wife and your job.
``Of course. We say you come in, you never forget our meal and we never forget your face.''
`HANDS ON EVERYTHING'
Pernetti's success at 318 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables, and at the restaurants he helped run in 21 countries before arriving in South Florida, flows from an artful combination of joyous schmoozing, aggressive attention to detail and absolute clarity about who's in charge. It's no accident that the first thing one sees upon entering Abbracci is a life-size portrait of Pernetti.
''I am the director of the orchestra, and every musician plays what I dictate,'' he says. ``I have my hands on everything.''
''Nino is very serious, so there might be a few disgruntled former employees,'' says Sandra Stefani, owner of Casa Toscana, on Miami's Upper East Side, who has served as Pernetti's personal chef for dinners outside his restaurant.
``He might come across as harsh to them if you want to take it that way. But he's also an educator. If you take it that way, you can learn a lot.''
Diners return again and again for Abbracci's warm welcome, clubby atmosphere and lighter-than-usual Northern Italian fare. It's a power-lunch spot for business types, politicians and University of Miami staff.
''Nino's an icon,'' says Robert Beans, a Gables plumbing contractor who has dined at Abbracci for 12 years. ``When people see me with him, they want to know who I am.
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At night it's everybody -- families, professionals, the occasional celebrity. Pernetti had his photo snapped at the restaurant with Robert DeNiro, Paul Newman, Pedro Almodovar, Sylvester Stallone, Don King, Tommy Lasorda, Frank Sinatra, Elie Wiesel, Tony Bennett, Joe Montana. One memorable lunchtime, he had the unlikely trifecta of David Letterman, Geraldo Rivera and Peter Jennings dining at different tables.
AN EARLY START
The drive that keeps Pernetti going at 62 began at 13, when he got a job preparing espresso at a little café bar in Limone, near his hometown of Campione. In high school he worked as a cook at the Grand Hotel Bristol in nearby Venice. He didn't like it.
''It was my vanity,'' he says. 'In the kitchen you cut onions and peel potatoes and you're always cleaning, and I was always smelly, with bruises on my hands. Then I saw the waiters' nice uniforms and their manicured hands. I asked to be taken out of the kitchen.''
The story of Pernetti's travels is told in Nino Pernetti's Caffe Abbracci Cookbook (University of Florida, $40), narrated by Pernetti, written and edited by Ferdie Pacheco and his wife, Luisita Sevilla Pacheco.
''This book is for my children,'' says Pernetti, whose daughters are 9 and 4 ½. (He filed for divorce last summer from their mother, Marlen Pernetti, his fifth wife.)
As much memoir as cookbook, the book tells how he moved from country to country, hotel to hotel, rising from waiter to bar manager, maitre d', food and beverage manager. His big break came when his bosses at the InterContinental hotel chain transferred him from Hanover, Germany, to the Cotton Bay Club in Eleutheera, Bahamas, then to a new InterContinental in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Other stops along the way: Lusaka, Zambia; Seoul, South Korea; Acapulco, Mexico; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Pattaya Beach, Thailand; Brussels; Istanbul; Caracas; Paris, and finally Miami.
They were challenging posts. In Kabul, his entire staff spoke only Farsi. In Kuala Lumpur, he hired an academic to help him sort through the customs of employees and clients who included pork-avoiding Muslims, beef-eschewing Hindus and Chinese who liked everything but loved pork best.
By 1986, Pernetti was ready to settle down and open his own restaurant. There was a short-lived Key Biscayne café, and then the 55-seat Baci (''kisses'') in Coral Gables. It was the Miami Vice era, and Pernetti, looking back, sounds like an advertisement for it.
``I loved Miami -- the way of life, the cosmopolitan city throbbing with excitement, money, power, elegance, jet-setters, politics, intrigue and a media explosion.
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But Baci was too small. Diners fought for reservations. He couldn't get a full liquor license. He looked for bigger digs, and, in 1989, opened the 200-seat Caffè Abbracci (``hugs'').
THE BIG SHOW
With his trademark attention to detail, he hired chef Mauro Bazzanini, a native of Italy's culinary capital, Bologona, to create a lighter version of classic Northern Italian fare.
He took personal charge of the staff, tablecloths, flatware, dishes, dishwashers -- everything. He compares opening a restaurant to opening a Broadway play:
'You need all your players around you. You must train them, teach them, polish their skills. Before I opened the curtains I taught them the tricks of the trade. I told them how to be an actor. I told them, `The show is starting; here we go.' '' |
