Why is Italian food so popular in New York?
Andrew Carmellini: It never dies. And A Voce, you know, when I was at Café Agot, I was there for a good chunk of time, six years, and, you know, people were always approaching me to do stuff, and I was like, “No, no, no, leave me alone, I’m having a good time here.” And almost exclusively every time it was they wanted to do something Italian. And I said no to a lot of people for many years on the Italian thing just because there are so many Italian restaurants in New York. I think it was like 3,000 or something like that at the last count, I mean, including like pizza places and stuff like that. But they were like, you know, we love your Italian food, we love, you know, the Italian things you’re doing at the Café. So it was really a kind of like, again, rash decision, we looked at this property and it had a beautiful terrace and I was like, we could do something Italian here. I mean, the way I approach Italian cooking is a little bit different than other people I respect approach Itali
