Rich Torrisi Bets Bigger On New York At His Latest Blockbuster Restaurant
Torrisi Bar & Restaurant, with its Italian-American ethos and odes to Chinatown, Jewish delis and Jamaican patties served up in slice shops, may be the New York eatery ever. The Mulberry Street spot is clearly a grand and jubilant celebration of the city’s rich and diverse food history. But it’s also about a deep commitment to the future of New York City.
“I’m quadrupling my count in New York,” says Major Food Group chef/general manager Rich Torrisi, who opened Torrisi Bar & Restaurant Dec. 1.
December 1st was not coincidentally the day when many New Yorkers and former New Yorkers were in Miami for Art Basel exhibitions and parties. Of course, Miami is also where the Major Food Group has opened several restaurants. And Torrisi’s partners Mario Carbone and Jeff Zalaznick have homes in Miami.
Torrisi says he’s glad so many people are doing well in Miami, but he’ll never leave New York. You could say Torrisi Bar & Restaurant, which is about a half-block away and about five times the size of the original Torrisi Italian Specialties, is a bit of a homecoming. But it’s important to understand that Rich Torresi never left.
Torrisi Italian Specialties, also on Mulberry Street, closed in 2015. But Major Food Group kept the space and used it for recipe development and private events. In 2020 the COVID pandemic changed everything and Major Food Group left this location. And Rich Torrisi realized he had lost an important anchor.
“The original space served as a connection to my chef’s life, to my craft,” he says.
So he walked down Mulberry Street looking for real estate the old-fashioned way, just like he did before he opened his first restaurant. He would see a space and leave a note with his name and number. People left town and the restaurant industry during the pandemic, but Torrisi’s steadfast belief in New York’s restaurant industry has remained.
“From what I know about the business, the best time to go on strike is the worst time,” he says. “I should look at the loss of my original space as an opportunity.”
In June 2020 he saw a location in the iconic Puck Building. It was bigger than he imagined, and Torrisi recalls New York feeling “apocalyptic” at the time, but Zalaznick helped convince him that the potential at 275 Mulberry St. outweighed the risk.
After nearly two and a half years working to open Torrisi Bar & Restaurant, Rich Torrisi is returning to what he does best: running a New York City kitchen in one of the city’s trendiest locations. He lavishly serves Zeppole caviar, chopped liver with Manischewitz, Francese sole, Nha Trang octopus, linguini in Manhattan pink clam sauce, and cavatelli from the menu with Jamaican patty ragout. He pays attention to time, temperature and technique while “checking” dishes. Ask him how his duck is so crispy, tender and flavorful and he tells you about a 600 degree oven and dry aged ducks for three weeks and weighs them because the cooking time depends on how heavy each bird is. Ask him why an simply described and simply presented tortellini pomodoro is such a crowd pleaser, and you’ll find out a lot about how he and Major Food Group think.
“We’re good at a lot of things, and one of the things that inspires us is to write extremely simple, almost intentionally boring, dish names, and then create something grand enough to generate excitement,” says torrisi “It sounds like a boring dish. But when people eat it, they like it. Honestly, these dishes take up the most time because they are so ubiquitous and prepared in so many restaurants across the country, and we have to get it so perfect to achieve that effect. We have revised our pasta dough for the tortellini. We basically took apart every single level from scratch.”
The dish also consists of confiscating tomatoes and then quickly preparing a tomato jam a la minute. Torrisi admits he’s surprised that even he enjoys this dish so much after eating it many times. But something about the work he put in and the alchemy involved has resulted in perfect ricotta-filled tomato tortellini that ooze sweetness and sourness. They taste more like tomatoes than any other tomato you’ve ever eaten.
The bar is available for walk-ins.
Big food group
Another standout dish that regularly features on the specials board is Capellini Cantonese. Another simple description. Another spectacular preparation. This is a whole lobster stir-fried with ginger and scallions, on aglio olio e peperoncino pasta (with the brightness of some sliced jalapeno and crushed green peppercorns).
“The crazy thing about this dish is that it’s so quick to prepare,” says Torrisi. “This whole dish takes less than three minutes to make.”
That cooking time alone is a nod to the magic of Chinatown restaurants.
The Capellini Cantonese is an incredibly delicious dish. It tastes both nostalgic and brand new. Like so much on the menu, it’s about Rich Torrisi embracing the food that has shaped his life and finding a new path forward with humility and confidence. It’s about a New York state of mind.
The chef grew up in Westchester, just north of the city, but he recalls eating in Chinatown since he was five. His father was a Canal Street court clerk, so Torrisi has long known that Mulberry Street is where Little Italy and Chinatown intersect. You can go eat a Zeppole after you’ve eaten a Char Siu Bao.
So he and Major Food Group make a statement with the Torrisi Bar & Restaurant. It is a statement about what New York was and what it can still be.
“We’ve always felt like there’s a huge untapped realm in places, especially in terms of nicer restaurants that actually represent New York,” says Torrisi. “You know, places that aren’t just fancy New York restaurants that are French. Restaurants that truly represent the fabric, DNA and culture of New York City. My biggest goal is for people to have that.”
That’s why, at Torrisi Bar & Restaurant, he has created a premium dining experience that reflects the city he loves so much and will never leave. He’s also open late and will happily seat customers at 10:30pm in a restaurant that’s fully booked. One of the most staggering results of the pandemic for him is that New York now has a severe shortage of late-night restaurants.
Rich Torrisi ‘quadruples in New York’.
Ryan John Lee
“It’s unacceptable,” said Torrisi, 43, who has lived in New York City for more than two decades. “You can’t call New York City the city that never sleeps when everything closes early. I’m bloody sick of the Covid New York. I want to do my part to bring the energy back to New York. I’m downtown. I’m in the right neighborhood. I have the right place. I have this incredibly beautiful bar. I have the right vibe. I feel like I have everything to just go ahead and give off that energy.”
Yes, he knows that COVID has caused many people to change their eating habits and go out earlier. But what he also noticed is that New Yorkers who want to eat late at night have almost no choice.
“My instincts tell me that as the desire and demand for 10 o’clock food dwindled, a lot more servers stopped running late,” he says. “I actually believe that there is a gigantic opportunity.”
This is another reason Torrisi Bar & Restaurant could be the best experience in New York City. It’s about simply giving everything when others have given up. It’s about a second chance in a city that always finds ways to make you tougher. In a word, it’s about resilience.
“I feel like anything that represents New York food culture is something that inspires and excites me,” says Torrisi. “My hope for Torrisi, just like The Grill or Carbone, is that people will go there if they want to go to a truly New York place where the space, the menu, our service, everything we do, makes them tick feel like they can only get that in New York City.”
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