Like Rick’s Café Americain in “Casablanca,” everybody comes to Anna Maria’s Wine Bar, established four years ago on a sunny corner site on Purchase Avenue in Rye. A gifted chef and engaging host, the eponymous Anna Maria Santorelli is also a raconteur, wit and something of a local celebrity. Customers love her, and she in turns loves her customers.
Born in Naples – she moved to the United States in 1972 – Santorelli learned the basics of Italian cooking from her mother. She said she always knew she wanted to cook and while she loves all manner of different cuisines, Italian food is what she grew up with and what she knows best. She put herself through culinary school in Manhattan and was doing an apprenticeship at the (long-shuttered) Colombe d’Or restaurant when she got a call from the school that Gracie Mansion needed a prep cook.
Working first under Mayor David Dinkins (“they were awesome to me,” she says of Dinkins and his wife, Joy), she quickly rose to become an assistant cook. Later, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani promoted her to executive chef, styling her Gracie Mansion’s “chief administrator.” She then stayed on for a short time, heading the kitchen for Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The list of famous people she has cooked for – John F. Kennedy Jr., Barbra Streisand, Mother Theresa to name but three – reads like a roll call of the great and the greater.
After a call came from Trump Tower, she worked for a while for former President Donald J. Trump as a private chef, “although that is something you may not wish to share with your readers,” she told me with a smile. Mind you, she has only good things to say about that experience.
When her brother passed away in 2004 at the age of only 37, she took stock and felt it was time for a change. “The mansion had meant no private life, no weekends, no holidays.” She opened her “dream” restaurant, Anna Maria’s, in Larchmont two years later, and ran it successfully for 13 years before feeling again it was time to move on. “Not having a life, not having the right staff, I wanted to do something fun,” she said. “I didn’t want to stand in the kitchen all day any longer.” A Realtor she met at an event told Mamaroneck-based Santorelli about the Rye site, adding that it was made for her. “So many people wanted this location, but here I am.”
And here she is. Decoration is, how shall we say? Eclectic. Celebrity photographs abound –Santorelli with former President Bill and Secretary Hillary Clinton; with Andrea Bocelli (she still swoons telling that story); with Sophia Loren and Bette Midler And then there are the signs saying, “Always and forever, be grateful”; and “This wine is making me awesome.” Well, fair enough.
If wine bar life doesn’t have the prestige of the Gracie Mansion kitchen – where whipping up supper for 200 people with hardly a shred of notice was not uncommon – it has plenty going for it regardless. At Anna Maria’s, I would say the wines are well-considered – “curated” is the word of the moment, with Italians and Californians dominating the list. In the whites, popular sellers include Panizzi, a Vernaccia from San Gimignano, a wine not often seen outside its native Tuscany; and Ron Rubin, a Russian River Chardonnay – all apples and pears with a hint of vanilla. In the reds, Frappato is a wine unique to Sicily, plenty of wild berries on the nose and even a hint of Sicilian bergamot. An Oberon Paso Robles, by contrast, offers subtle, silky tannins and rose petals. Dolce Fiore is a good example of a wine long out of fashion – sparkling red Lambrusco – making a welcome comeback.
As it was early evening when I met Santorelli and was working, I opted for an altogether different vinous route and at Santorelli’s suggestion got stuck into a bottle of Prezza, a Prosecco from the well-known Botter family. They produce beautiful wines in the Veneto – and this fizz was certainly whiz.
To eat, there are simple but delicious snacks, like polenta with wild mushrooms and gorgonzola, warm crab artichoke dip and pigs in a blanket with Dijon mustard. I also enjoyed some crisp arancini (Sicilian risotto fritters with Pecorino and Parmigiano) and a cheese plate with mozzarella and manchego.
Santorelli is behind the square bar every night. “People expect to see you,” she said, “so I’m here.” They also expect to see her Cavapoo, Massimo, a darling of a doggie whom, she says, kept her going through Covid. Now quite a fixture in Rye himself, Massimo is also something of a dandy, attested to by a photograph of him on the wall looking very dapper in what appears to be a blazer. “Ah yes, he likes to get dressed up,” his mother casually affirmed. “On Columbus Day, he wore an Italian flag.”
She told me she is going to write a book and is thinking of calling it, “If These Pots Could Talk.”
Well, she certainly has plenty of tasty material for it, and not just food.
In any event, here’s looking at you, kid.
For more, visit amwinebar.com.
