Restaurant’s Unwanted Fame Saddens Owners
The predinner routine at Vitello’s Italian Restaurant was typical on this afternoon. Except for the TV news crew.
Co-owner Steve Restivo, 61, was tending huge pots of bubbling soup stock and marinara sauce in the kitchen, while a waitress folded red napkins under a mural of a Sicilian fishing village in the main dining room. His brother Joe, 49, was dealing with the reporter inside the entrance.
“So, can we come through this way with the camera and say, you know, ‘Blake and his wife were eating in the corner booth after making 8:30 reservations?’ ” the newscaster asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Joe said with a shrug. “Whatever.”
In the two weeks since actor Robert Blake’s wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, was shot to death a block from the neighborhood eatery, Vitello’s--an unassuming anchor on a Tujunga Avenue shopping strip--has been catapulted to iconic status, if just for its 15 minutes of fame.
The restaurant has been mentioned on all kinds of television shows--from network news to gossipy entertainment programs. Late-night television host Jay Leno has joked about it. And last week, Vitello’s reportedly was added to a $55 tour of Los Angeles crime scenes that includes notorious landmarks associated with Charles Manson and O.J. Simpson.
Suddenly, after two decades of solid but ever-so-slightly declining business, Vitello’s restaurant is hot.
Business is up about 25% since the slaying, Steve said, with the restaurant attracting morbid curiosity seekers and old customers who realized that it had been too long since they had stopped by for a plate of Ravioli al Vitello with cream sauce.
Yet as much as the brothers enjoy seeing old friends, and as much as they appreciate the business, they never wanted it to happen this way.
“This is too much for us--we’re simple people” Steve said, gesturing passionately with a mascarpone-laden dessert spreader. “Why this place? Why around here? Yeah, it’s publicity, but I’d rather that [someone] would come in here because they heard from a friend it was a good place to eat. And that my friend’s wife is still alive, and he was in no trouble.”
Dreaming of Show Business
Though he grew up working in the pizza joints of Chicago’s South Side, a life in show business has always been a dream for Steve, the older and more outspoken of the brothers. Joe and Steve arrived in working-class Chicago from their native Sicily as children. Soon after, Steve saw his first movie, “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”
Awed by the spectacle, he eventually wandered out to California in the late ‘50s to try his hand at acting. Family matters brought him back to Chicago, but by the mid-’70s, he struck out for California again, this time with his younger brother in tow.
The pair bought Vitello’s from another Sicilian family and were soon catering to neighborhood families and entertainment industry types, among them producer-director Garry Marshall and Blake, who has a fusilli pasta with marinara sauce and sauteed spinach named for him on the menu. Over the years, these regulars would find dozens of bit movie parts for Steve Restivo, but it was the restaurant that put his children through college.
Still, Vitello’s has its theatrical flourishes: The set-like mural of the brothers’ hometown of Cefalu dominates the main room, and in the back, a dedicated crowd of older patrons gathers on weekends to hear semipro singers perform opera and show tunes.
Blake--born Mickey Gubitosi in Nutley, N.J.--liked to hang out with the opera crowd when he came here alone. Friday night, exactly two weeks after his wife’s slaying, his predicament, a plot as worthy of Puccini as it is of the National Enquirer, was the talk of the room.
“He was a sweetheart,” pianist Adele Albani said. “We loved him. His favorite song was ‘I Remember You.’ I’ll never be able to play it until this whole thing clears up.”
Steve, meanwhile, was busy dealing with the new Friday night bustle. Dressed in an Italian-cut houndstooth sport coat, he seemed to be everywhere at once, leading families to their booths, singing a little opera and slapping the backs of a few old-timers.
Main Topic of Conversation
From table to table, Bakley’s slaying was the main topic of conversation.
“It’s unbelievable,” said opera singer Tanya Themmen. “I just came back from New York, and it’s all anybody’s talking about.”
Berwyn and Elaine Friedman of Woodland Hills were settling the tab for their chicken piccata and spaghetti dinners about 7:30 p.m. It was Elaine’s first time at Vitello’s, but Berwyn had eaten here occasionally.
“I always left my gun at home, though,” he deadpanned.
Two tables over, a man joined his family at the table after parking his car. “The parking lot was full,” he said. “I had to park around the block.”
“See, it’s Friday night,” whispered a young lady who apparently was curious about why Blake had parked a block away the night of the slaying. “There’s no reason not to park back there.”
Steve counts Blake among his most loyal customers; questions about that night bring on his anger and sadness and aren’t always answered in full.
He said he had left the restaurant shortly after Blake and Bakley. Joe, who remained at Vitello’s, recalled a frantic Blake coming back, saying that his wife had been shot, but that he had called 911.
Steve said Blake returned to the restaurant the next night, asking what time he had left, and seeking a copy of his sales receipt as a record of the exact time he paid for dinner.
Steve declined to talk further about Blake’s visit. “It’s just too much,” he said.
On Friday, some diners brought up the inevitable comparisons with Mezzaluna, where Nicole Brown Simpson ate her last meal, and where Ron Goldman worked as a waiter.
The Brentwood restaurant saw its share of looky-loos after the two were slain, only to go out of business in 1997.
Steve snorted at the comparison. Vitello’s was here during Tujunga Avenue’s dowdier days, and it has survived through the strip’s hip reincarnation--replete with yoga center, day spa, and the little cafe across the street that serves Cajun pizza on faux-rusted industrial tabletops.
“This is tragic, and I don’t know how it’s going to play,” Steve said. “But I’ll be [working here] till the day I die, I guess, if God gives me the strength.”