A Clan’s Cuisine

Next time you drop in to Fabrocini’s Italian Kitchen in Tarzana, ask yourself why the home-style cooking in this place seems familiar.

If you answer that it reminds you of the cooking at Fabrocini’s Italian Kitchen in Agoura Hills, you get third prize--because brothers Joseph and Vincent Fabrocini own both places.

If, on the other hand, you answer that it reminds you of the cooking at Fab’s Italian Kitchen in Sherman Oaks, noted in this space last month, you get second prize.

And if you know the rest of the story--namely that members of the big Fabrocini family run all three places but don’t exactly admit to that fact unless you ask directly--you get first prize.

The Fabrocinis are a big family indeed. Brothers Joe and Vinnie Fabrocini--respectively the uncle and father of the Joseph and Vincent who now run Fabrocini’s Italian Kitchen--founded a restaurant bearing the family name in Tarzana in 1981.

When it closed a few years later, Joe and Vinnie went their separate ways--not happily, it seems. Joe opened up Fab’s Italian Kitchen in Sherman Oaks and Vinnie opened up his own place in Tarzana. Joe still runs his place with the aid of his children.

Vinnie’s Tarzana place closed when he died in 1986, but in 1992, just around the corner, his sons Joseph and Vincent opened up Fabrocini’s Italian Kitchen, a small place seating only 26. You had to stand in line to get a seat, so the brothers expanded. A year ago, they opened a second location in Agoura Hills.

Given all this history, you might expect the Fabrocinis to be one big happy family, right? In fact, communications, shall we say, suffered between the two sides of the family when the original place closed down. Today, the children of Joe and Vinnie--all of them of course cousins--will say only that they wish one another well.

But the ties that bind this family show up in the menus of the three restaurants, for they are remarkably similar. It’s family Italian-style cooking, and that means chicken parmigiana, chicken piccata, veal Marsala, fussili puttanesca, cioppino, and the like, all for prices well under $15.

As described in this space last month, the menu at Fab’s Italian Kitchen looks almost exactly as it did when the original family place opened in 1981, although there’s an ever-changing list of chalkboard specials to keep things interesting.

Meanwhile, at Fabrocini’s Italian Kitchen, his cousin Joseph has some specialty items on his menu, including penne Diane, named after his sister, with shrimp, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, olives and tomatoes in a white wine sauce.

The inspiration for the menus at both Fabrocini’s and Fab’s was the matriarch of the family, Rose Fabrocini, mother to Joe and Vinnie and grandmother to Joseph and Vincent and the many cousins on both sides of the family.

Rose Fabrocini died at a fine age--about 90, Joseph Fabrocini says--nearly a decade ago, but the memory of her cooking lives on, proof that, in the restaurant business as in all of life, blood is indeed thicker than water.

* Fabrocini’s Italian Kitchen is at 18608 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana, (818) 342-4490, and at 29020 Agoura Road, Agoura Hills, (818) 879-8268. Fab’s Italian Kitchen is at 4336 Van Nuys Blvd., Sherman Oaks, (818) 995-2933.

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Juan Hovey writes about the restaurant scene in the San Fernando Valley and outlying points. He may be reached at (805) 492-7909 or fax (805) 492-5139 or via e-mail at JHovey@compuserve.com