What Tony Soprano taught me about restaurants

There is a pivotal scene in "The Sopranos" (season 1, episode 13), where, during a torrential thunderstorm, the Soprano family ends up at its favorite restaurant, Nuovo Vesuvio, in suburban New Jersey. As the restaurant’s owner, Artie Bucco, delivers his lovingly prepared plates of pasta to the family, Carmella, still shaking off the rain, says, “Thank you, Artie. You saved our friggin’ lives here.”

But before they start eating, Tony, looking uncharacteristically at peace with the less murderous aspects of his life, raises a glass to Carmela, Meadow and A.J., and proposes a toast. 

“To my family,” he says. “Someday soon, you’re gonna have families of your own. And if you’re lucky, you’ll remember the little moments. Like this. That were good.”

I think that line has informed every aspect of my food writing ever since.

Some of our favorite memories are of those “good little moments" spent at restaurants. Many of mine are steeped in nostalgia: the healing dinners I had with my father at the old Friendly’s on Beechmont Avenue after he’d sobered up and joined A.A.; the caprese salad I shared with my mother, grandmother and stepfather at a surprisingly good Italian restaurant on the night my flight from Florida to New York was cancelled – a godsend, since I really didn’t want to go back to New York just yet; the $5 Cokes I drank with my best friend from high school after we tried to order beers at the Westin Hotel bar, but were refused service because we were so obviously 16. 

Aside from creating our most cherished memories, restaurants can also play into our fantasies. They can set the stage for us to play the best versions of ourselves or, in some cases, allow us to pretend we are someone we’re really not at all. I’m a decadent, cigar-chomping tycoon when I’m at the Precinct. I’m a curmudgeonly old bastard who just wants to read my newspaper over black coffee at the Echo. I’m the damaged soul of an F. Scott Fitzgerald character when I seek tranquility under the spell of a Four Roses old-fashioned at the bar at Palm Court.

At their best, restaurants and bars can even renew our faith in humanity. I think about the calming presence of Joe and Carla Tucker at Tucker’s on Vine. How their warmth and kindness toward everyone – and I mean EVERYONE – in this city serves as a constant reminder of just how good people can be. I think about Mike Stankovich at Longfellow, who has an uncanny knack for knowing you’re not doing alright, even when you say you are. I think about the burst of energy and gratefulness Molly Wellmann shows every single customer who enters the stardust world of Japp’s. 

I think the reason I like writing about food so much is because I’ve always been so thankful for the memories, experiences and minor miracles restaurants and bars have given me throughout my life. I think of them like some people think of old teachers. I want to write the ones that mattered to me most and thank them for helping me in ways they might never have realized.

I want to write a letter to Tyler Kord, my favorite chef in Brooklyn, for always making me feel at home in a city that never felt that way. I want to thank the waitress in Lafayette, Louisiana, who changed my life when she taught me that a dollop of potato salad in my gumbo is far better than a dollop of rice. The young waiter at a Texas-themed restaurant in Virginia who always remembered my name and my favorite beer when I came in bleary eyed for six straight nights of sitting at the bedside of a friend as he lay dying in a Falls Church hospital bed in 2018: The same friend with whom I drank those $5 Cokes back when we were kids. 

Like Carmela said, sometimes the kindness a restaurant or a bar provides can save your friggin’ life. 

Now, of course, is the time for us to save theirs. According to a recent report by the U.S. Department of Labor Department, 498,000 people lost their jobs in leisure and hospitality businesses just last month. And three out of four of those job losses were in the restaurant and bar industry. Nationally, more than 110,000 restaurants and bars have closed since measures to contain the spread of the COVID-19 were put in place last March.

More: Downtown restaurants struggle to stay afloat as regular customers work, eat at home

Which is why we must continue to pay back the emotional debts we owe these places. To eat or drink at them if we feel comfortable doing so; to order takeout from them if we don’t. To provide some sort of metaphorical shelter from the storm by tipping heavily, visiting frequently and trying places we’ve never tried before. By purchasing their T-shirts and hats and bumper stickers as if they are our favorite sports teams. By leaving a note on their Facebook or Instagram pages, simply thanking them for hanging in there. 

Of course, all of this might not be enough to save them. A more aggressive treatment would be for all of us to help contain the virus by wearing our masks and keeping our distance, for federal and state governments to create a more united financial, medical and emotional response to a virus that has killed almost 400,000 Americans thus far.

In supporting our restaurants, we can try, at least, to make sure the city we know, love and miss like hell will endure; to make sure our favorite booth or barstool will be there waiting for us once all of this has passed. 

Most importantly, we can help ensure the survival of our restaurant and bar workers – the ones who have worked their tails off, and sometimes, dedicated their lives to, creating our most cherished memories, and making sure those little things Tony Soprano toasted on a rainy night in New Jersey are there for us far into the future.