Newly Minted Michelin Star Holder Rich Torrisi Is Living The Italian-American Dream

Photo Credit: Scott McDermottONE YEAR AFTER THE RETURN OF MAJOR FOOD GROUP’S FIRST RESTAURANT, TORRISI, RESTAURATEUR RICH TORRISI REFLECTS ON HOW HE BROUGHT BACK
HIS PERSONALLY MOST IMPORTANT PROJECT TO DATE — AND ONE THAT JUST EARNED ITS FIRST MICHELIN STAR.

BY LAURA SCHREFFLER
PHOTOGRAPHY SCOTT MCDERMOTT
STYLING ERIN MCSHERRY
GROOMING VALISSA YOE
SHOT ON LOCATION AT TORRISI, NYC

RICH TORRISI VIVIDLY REMEMBERS THE FIRST time he saw the New York City skyline. It is a moment indelibly inked into his mind, because it was the moment that changed everything, that set the course of his career to come.

The 44-year-old chef and co-founder of Major Food Group (MFG), the powerhouse brand behind the likes of Carbone, ZZ’s Club, The Grill, and of course, his now-iconic namesake eatery, Torrisi, describes the experience as “opening the door to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.” He recalls growing up in Hastings-on-Hudson, a suburb of nearby Westchester, on the Hudson River, and how nearby Manhattan always seemed like a faraway dream. “Ever since I was a little kid, I’d head to the back of my grandmother’s apartment complex. There was a beautiful view there, and I was able to see all the way down the Hudson River and a slice of the New York City skyline. Looking at it, I was enthralled. The second I saw it, I fell in love with it.”

As he grew up and headed into his teenage years, Torrisi may not have known quite how his life might end up, but he certainly knew where it would. “Every time I looked at New York, at that view, I had this feeling that I was going to live there and be successful. The more I went to the city, the more I absorbed it. It was osmosis; New York is my blood type. I officially came here as a young adult, and I haven’t left. I moved here as soon as I finished culinary school and I’ve been working like a maniac here for over 20 years. I got so submerged into the texture of the city that, very quickly, I became a New Yorker. New York has shaped my life. It shapes all my decisions. I am New York.”

It certainly shaped one of the most important — and personal — to date. December 1, 2022, marked the day Torrisi and his partners at Major Food Group, Mario Carbone and Jeff Zalaznick, reopened Torrisi after the original — Torrisi Italian Specialties — closed its doors on New Year’s Day in 2015.

When it first opened in 2009, Torrisi was nothing less than a love letter to New York. It reframed Italian specialities, from spaghetti with red sauce and chicken parmigiana, as gourmet delights. The first spot that launched the MFG empire was also the one that created a movement in Italian fine dining, which, previously, had only existed in New York in restaurants like Rao’s and Scalinatella. “Mario and I are both Italian American, so we felt it was culturally important that we open in Little Italy, on somewhere like Mulberry Street, and that we represent the next wave of what was happening with Italian food in New York. We did it, and it was incredibly special. Reopening Torrisi was the hardest opening I’ve ever done,” he confesses.

We are approaching the first anniversary of that very reopening when I sit down with Rich, post-photoshoot, who is staunchly expressing that he would not be sitting here today, in this very spot, if not for COVID-19.

“COVID was a gigantic emergency, particularly for the hospitality industry, which was hit the hardest. We were lucky that we were in a unique position to turn a time of tremendous downturn into an opportunity. Part of why we were able to have gotten such a glorious space in the Puck building is because of that type of COVID emergency,” he notes.

Photo Credit: Scott McDermott

But Torrisi’s story, as so few restaurants did during the pandemic, had a happy ending. “When we gave back the original space, my heart was broken. I had to give up more than the space — it was giving up our storybook beginnings, too. I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to do. I started walking up and down Mulberry Street, thinking that if I was going to do anything, now would be the time. But the pessimistic side of me was thinking that it was going to be a very heavy lift to do that. I then came upon [the current] space, all boarded and graffitied up, and I felt something the second I pulled up to it.”

For those unfamiliar, the Puck Building is a New York City landmark. The Nolita locale dates to 1886, when it was a printing press. But to Torrisi, it romantically recalls the city’s darkest underbelly; he references the gangs of New York, Bill the Butcher, and more in telling its history. “This immediate half block is just so legendary. I got chills when I saw it. It’s a way bigger space than I ever imagined, but I took that one moment, those chills, and I used them to push me through.”

When he introduced the space to his partners, he was grateful that Zalaznick was team Torrisi. “As soon as Jeff walked in, he said, ‘This is the best space in the world we could possibly get to do Torrisi.’ He pumped me up. He was like, ‘This is going to be the best restaurant that opens up in New York; it’s going be a lightning bolt.’ Long story short, we got aggressive about the opportunity, took the space, and two-and-a-half years later, it popped off like a rocket ship, just like it did the first time.”

But to succeed, one must progress, meaning that the restaurant could not have been as successful as it is today, more than a decade later, without more substantial alterations than a change of location alone (though, that being said, its new home at 275 Mulberry Street is just a few doors down from its previous abode). “It’s different in a lot of ways,” he notes. “This space is glorious whereas the original space was the definition of the little engine that could — just pure talent and guts. We put it all on the line: we had no high-net-worth investors, no one backing us. It was friends and family. It was the definition of that kind of storybook beginning — if you build it, they will come. It was the American Dream. We created something special and fresh. But now, I’m telling a new story: I knew I couldn’t redo the first restaurant. It would be like redoing a freshman album and just putting a twist on the songs and calling them new pieces of work.”

And so, the menu has changed significantly from its predecessor. In its earliest state, Torrisi was responsible for putting unique twists on Big Apple favorites, like chopped liver with Manischewitz, and open-faced Boar’s Head sandwiches, what he refers to as “an original language that we created for Italian and New York City food.”

Now, he has taken that very language he and Carbone created, and supercharged it, making it more elegant and innovative. As such, Capellini Cantonese is a nod to nearby Chinatown, where his father worked at the Supreme Court at the intersection of Center and Canal streets. Lobster is cooked in the shell, Chinese style, but made with angel hair capellini pasta. Chopped liver, a typical New York insult, is now anything but, elevated and done, subversively, in a beautiful caviar-style service.

“I took those best ideas in class from the original Torrisi, and I built an entire menu using its original DNA as a framework. The menu is half new ideas, half old ideas, reinvigorated. I brought them up 10 years later with new techniques and ingredients. The reality is, it’s being well received as a fresh idea, like I knew it would be.”

The reception has been gratifying, given how personal this is to him. “I always believed that it would be,” he insists. “But it was nerve-racking to do it again, to put it all out there again. The restaurant is as busy as anything we’ve ever opened. It’s a unicorn. It’s packed the same on Monday or Tuesday that it is on Friday or Saturday.”

And that’s enough for him. Although he says that accolades from James Beard or Michelin would be nice, they are not his end goal. Having such a deep-seated, long-lasting love for the city means that Torrisi has its best interests at heart — and that goes for its residents more than anything. If New Yorkers are happy with what he’s created, that’s enough for him. [That being said, Torrisi did, in fact, earn his first Michelin star post-interview at the 2023 Michelin Guide ceremony on November 7.]

“We fight to be the best, and if people recognize us being the best, that’s great. But we will not do anything; we will not check any box to make sure we receive [certain accolades]. In my opinion, the second you check one of those boxes, you compromise your identity to be truly yourself, what you are. What I hope more than anything is that New Yorkers are thrilled with this restaurant. My goal is to have them feel like it’s one of their restaurants; that when people from all around the world come in and call New Yorkers for advice on where to dine, they’re told to go to Torrisi, Carbone, or The Grill, because we’re giving you an ‘only in New York City’ experience. If New Yorkers think it’s the best, then nothing else matters. You’re not going to stand the test of time otherwise. The feedback I’m getting is that we’ve opened a creative and original restaurant that New Yorkers can be proud of, and that’s a dream. There’s nothing I want after that.”

Photo Credit: Scott McDermott

RICH TORRISI HAS HAD A LATE NIGHT.

He tells me this, wearily, the second time we chat, though I see no evidence of it from his appearance. He looks fresh and baby-faced, a 44 that could easily pass for 24. The coffee in his hand doesn’t give away anything: for New Yorkers, coffee is like water.

Torrisi’s late night didn’t come from hitting the town hard. He was executing one of his Major Good dinners in partnership with the Robin Hood Foundation, a poverty-fighting non-profit. It was something he and his business partners created back in 2019 at the original Torrisi, when it was no longer running, as a test kitchen. They were already donating and doing events with Robin Hood at the time, but decided to take things further and host curated, private dinners with the intention of giving back. It was a brilliant, impactful idea, and just one further example of how incredible this dream team is as a unit.

Torrisi says this now. “My belief — and the real magic of [MFG] — is that any of the three of us would have been very successful on our own as a single individual entrepreneur, restaurateur, chef, or businessman. We could have gone that route. But it was more interesting to see what would happen when the three of us put our talents and minds together. This kind of success is something we’d only be able to achieve as a team,” he declares.

The success of Major Food Group is substantial. Their achievements include legendary restaurants like Carbone, Sadelle’s, and The Grill; exclusive private venues such as The Crown Club at Barclays Center; and hotels such as The Newbury Boston. In recent years, MFG has expanded across continents, with restaurants in Hong Kong, Riyadh, Doha, and Paris; new concepts in ZZ’s Club (which opens this fall in New York), Contessa, and VINO; and Villa, the group’s first foray into the luxury real estate space, a residential tower in Miami.

I want to know how three men have managed to grow such a substantial empire in just over a decade, and here, Torrisi lets me in on a simple, yet powerful secret: when it comes to business, three is very much the magic number.

“As with any close relationship, there can be a butting of heads. There aren’t any relationships that don’t have any issues. The ones that last are due to respect. People talk about trust, but I think respect is the most important word, because it encompasses trust. We all have a high level of respect for each other, and what our individual talents are. We’re also straightforward, ‘not-take-it-personal’ guys. We have never been afraid to tackle the elephant in the room. There are almost never any lingering issues. We see it and say it, and that’s how we roll,” he says with a grin, adding, “Plus, there’s a simple part of it, too, that works amazingly well: you need to have an odd number of partners, because when you’re even, you can easily get split. It’s just simple math: if you’re split down the middle, you’re at loggerheads, and when emotions are high, that’s when you break. But the reality with us is that with three, one person is always overruled. That person might be upset, they might heckle the group, but it will fade, and the group will move on. That always happens and we don’t get stuck. I think we would have been stuck in various moments of our company’s growth if there were just two of us, that’s for sure.”

Photo Credit: Scott McDermott

The strength of Major Food Group, in Torrisi’s opinion, is that they all have the ability and acumen to do everything, but each of them sticks to his strength. He handles culinary matters and top line issues, tastings, and menus; Carbone oversees branding and aesthetics, inclusive of uniforms, plates, and cutlery; and Zalaznick is responsible for new business. “We’ve always worked like that, except in the beginning, when it was just me and Mario, and we were way more purely chef-driven; we were just budding 30-year-olds in our prime chef years,” he notes.

It was Carbone he met first, back in school at the Culinary Institute of America (C.IA.), as a green and hungry 18-year-old. The two went on to work at Daniel Boulud’s Café Boulud together, among other restaurants, and even lived together in the city for a time. It was only when they were in between jobs, in their twenties, that they arrived at the idea of doing something together.
“When time came to do our own thing, we ended up having a very similar idea: new Italian specialties and creating a classic Italian American deli. It made immediate sense for us to do it together, to partner together. This was the impetus, the beginning. We found a place just by chance on Mulberry Street, which is the most famous Italian street in America. Once we did that and opened, Jeff showed up. He fell in love with what we were doing instantaneously, and then started coming in all the time. We started hanging out with him and quickly realized that we had gigantic dreams that were very similar.”

Their dreams unequivocally became reality with the arrival of their magic third who, as it happens, is responsible for coming up with the company’s name. “I remember the day Jeff forged into Torrisi before we were open; Mario and I were just there and he said, ‘I got it!’ And I was like, What do you got? And he answered, ‘The name of the company, Major Food Group,’” Torrisi says with a smile, drawing out the name in a jokey manner. He continues, “I looked at Mario and we both started laughing. We thought it was awesome because we were total nobodies who had just started this little thing in Manhattan, but we were saying that we were major league, like Major League Baseball. It was a bold move to name our company when we had one 400 square-foot restaurant. But we rallied behind that — and here we are.”

Today, Torrisi feels like a king. He is as happy as he can be, with his namesake back and better than ever and with ownership of a company that has gone from strength to strength, becoming a major player in the hospitality industry. He can’t ask for anything more.

“I’m 100 percent living my dream,” he confesses, adding, “I’m always thinking I can do that. I can do better. I can do more. That’s how I ended up creating Major Good, even though I had no time to do it. But you find the time for what’s important, and you just keep snipping and changing things, so that you make the time. For example, I started playing the piano. But now, because I love it so much, I’m not willing to go backward. I’m not willing to play it once or twice a week anymore; I must play four or five times a week. I base my whole life on following that feeling, and I refuse to make an excuse as to why something can’t happen.”

To me, Torrisi embodies the Field of Dreams ethos: if you build it, they will come. And together, with Carbone and Zalaznick, he’s done just that. It’s certainly something to be proud of, and he is. “The greatest luxury in life is doing exactly what it is that you want to be doing with your time and not caring at all about money. That’s what defines luxury to me,” he declares. “You’re passionate about that thing you’re doing. You don’t need to make any excuses for yourself about what you’d rather be doing or what you should be doing. It doesn’t mean you have to be rich; it just means you’re not worried about living and bills — you’re OK. You’ve found a way in this world to do what you love with your time, and you have plenty of time to do it.”

As he’s discovered by shuttering and reopening Torrisi, even when it’s time for one door to close, there’s always time for it to open again in a new and entirely unexpected way.

Photo Credit: Scott McDermott