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After exactly 120 years, the curtain has fallen on the Theater District institution Barbetta, with the iconic Italian restaurant having served its final course Friday night.
“It left such an impact on people,” said Suzanna Gardijan, who has been working at Barbetta for 38 years as its Private Events Manager.
“Everybody’s coming back tonight just to say goodbye, and a lot of people are crying, telling us how much Barbetta has meant to them,” Gardijan said from her perch at coat check.
Throngs of well-wishers filled its stately Astor family-built townhouse on 46th Street, full of Italian antiques and furniture, all craving one last plate of the eatery’s signature dishes from Pacific Swordfish to its red wine and beef concoction Bue Al Barolo.
One of the revelers bidding adieu was Bill Bradley, the NBA Hall of Famer and three-term Jersey senator.
“There’s a genuine sadness to it because there won’t be another Barbetta,” Bradley told The Post with tears in his eyes following his last meal at the restaurant.
“From the people first, to the atmosphere, the unbelievable food and perfect location; you put all of that together and you have something special, and it’s all thanks to Laura.”
He’s referring to Laura Maiogli. Starting in 1962, she ran Barbetta with meticulous attention to detail and a passion for the business.
She died at age 93 on Jan. 17, and staff members speculate that it was Maioglio’s decision that Barbetta should close upon her death.
“Laura was an amazing woman who taught me everything,” Gardijan told The Post of her boss, who would frequently take her staff to Italy for culinary inspiration.
“She had such an attention to detail and wanted the restaurant to be like her home.”
Maioglio was only Barbetta’s second-ever owner, which long made it the oldest restaurant in New York City owned by the same founding family. It’s also widely known as the oldest Italian restaurant in Manhattan.
“To have a restaurant be in the family for that long, what an accomplishment!” said Sal Scognamillo, who runs the young-by-comparison 1944-era Patsy’s Italian Restaurant a few blocks away.
“They kept it going A-1, first-class all the way, never compromising their quality or integrity. That’s how a restaurant should be run.”
Maioglio initially took it over from her Italian-born father, Sebastiano, who first opened the eatery at a time when Italian food was still a delicacy at the turn of the century.
He served the USA’s earliest Italian celebrities, including the opera singer Enrico Caruso and conductor Artruo Toscanini.
“Barbetta introduced Piemontese cuisine to America,” Andrew Cotto, the co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Appetito Magazine, a digital publication dedicated to Italian cuisine and culture, told The Post.
The restaurant was one of the first to introduce and popularize truffles in the States, for example.
“Whether regional Italian or classic Italian-American, it’s always sad when an institution like this closes because they are so important to the cultural fabric of our city.”
Barbetta on the big screen
In the intervening decades, Barbetta became firmly stitched in that Big Apple fabric.
Jackie Kennedy, Andy Warhol, John Lennon, Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman all dined there.
Even The Rolling Stones were frequent guests, endearing themselves to Laura’s mother, Piera, who took a liking to Mick Jagger and company in return.
“(Once) they came in and said, ‘How’s mom?’” Maioglio recalled in a 2024 interview with W42ST.
“She had died just two weeks before and we had put a photograph with a black velvet border in the coat room. They went out, bought a bouquet of flowers, brought it back, put it in front of her picture, and said, ‘That’s for mama.’”
Its prime location in the midst of the Great White Way made Barbetta the go-to spot for theater-adjacent parties, including the opening night celebration of “Hamilton,” its theater a mere block away.
The restaurant’s museum-quality interiors were also frequently on the big screen thanks to filmmakers like Martin Scorsese (he captured a scene for “The Departed” inside) and Woody Allen (who put its stately digs in flicks like “Celebrity” and “Alice”).
Even Jimmy Stewart shot a movie there: 1959’s “The FBI Story.”
On the small screen, Barbetta has been front and center in “Mad Men” and “Sex and the City.”
“With Barbetta closing, it’s a great loss to the city,” longtime Barbetta fan Geraldo Rivera told The Post of the restaurant known for its blazing marquee outside and grand decor, including an antique piano.
“I don’t know anybody who could fill Laura’s shoes; she was an extraordinary and graceful person, always so kind and gentle.”
With Laura at the helm, fashion shows were thrown in its sunny garden in the groovy ’60s.
Maioglio’s husband, the late Gunther Blobel, was also a force: a molecular biologist, he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1999.
Naturally, the reception was held at Barbetta.
Rivera, who fondly remembers Barbetta’s creamy mozzarella and thin-sliced prosciutto, recalls one night in 2016 in the heat of the Presidential election when the Clintons showed up.
“Laura was introducing Hillary to people at the restaurant in a way that wasn’t an endorsement, but a welcome, and they made the rounds.”
“She was like Elaine (of her namesake iconic restaurant, which also closed when she died in 2011) and I miss them both,” Rivera said.
“Two shining lights, gone from the restaurant scene.”
Round of Applause
As the packed restaurant continued to dole out its last licks as its final night went on, diners spontaneously burst into a round of applause when Gardijan walked across the floor.
“I was not expecting that,” she told The Post afterwards.
Also zipping around was the waiter Margarito ‘Mario’ Morales, who first started working at Barbetta in the kitchen 13 years ago before working his way up the ladder.
“My favorite Barbetta memory is of whenever Laura was here,” Morales told The Post as he vaulted from one guest to another.
“When I heard Barbetta was closing, I cried and immediately made a reservation,” said Alan Reiff, another mourner and longtime customer who remembers his first visit 39 years ago, after seeing Carol Channing in “Hello Dolly. “
Also in the crowd on Friday night were multiple brides who had their weddings at Barbetta.
“I was devastated when I heard it was closing, it made me cry,” said Alice Uhul, who married her late husband Mitch in Barbetta’s leafy garden in October 1996.
“I’m going to have the swordfish tonight, because that’s what we had at our wedding.”
‘Where are you going?’
“When you lose a place that’s been around for so long, the character of the neighborhood becomes a little bit less,” the photographer Karla Murray told The Post.
She, along with husband James, have been chronicling small businesses around New York for the past 25 years in books and a popular Instagram page.
“Now is the time to support your mom and pop businesses. You can’t just assume they’ll be there tomorrow or the next day.”
Now, emotional staff members are wondering what’s next. “I have no idea,” said Gardijan.
“A lot of people are asking me, ‘Where are you going? We’ll follow you!’”
