When Mark Mazzotta was at Iona College, he waited tables at night in Papa Razzi restaurant in White Plains. Little did he know back then that he would again be working in the same spot a dozen-plus years later. This time, however, he and his brother, Joseph, along with partner Scott Baron are the owners of the restaurant, newly named Antipasti.
The old restaurant was stripped down to its studs and $6 million later is itself a work of art, mixing stone, wood and plaster. It is, as Mark Mazzotta puts it, the brothers”™ “crowning achievement.”
The 12,000-square-foot restaurant at 1 N. Broadway is three offerings in one; a wine bar, an antipasti bar and a brick oven pizzeria. There”™s enough seating for 350 diners.
A floor-to-ceiling glass enclosed wine cooler just beyond the bar entices aficionados with some 500 bottles of wine, 75 percent of Italian origin. Fifty or so are available by the glass. Mazzotta points out there are different shaped wine glasses for the different vintages; no one-size-fits-all here. Across from the cooler is another glass enclosure filled with a variety of aged cheeses. The adjoining antipasti station is “like an Italian sushi bar,” Mazzotta said. Diners can be seated in front of a glass partition and watch as the chefs slice paper thin prosciutto and then arrange on a plate any combination of a number of selections from lobster to burratta to stuffed mushrooms.
A few steps away is the main dining room, which wraps around to the back to a smaller and more intimate area. A back door offers a second entrance complete with a reception desk that Mazzotta said will be used once the renovations for the rest of the building are complete and diners become acquainted with his restaurant. The rear entrance is near the elevators for the adjacent parking garage.
Mazzotta parts heavy drapes off the dining room to reveal a wine cellar, albeit above ground that is used for wine dinners and wine events.
The brothers are also winemakers, who while on a trip to Napa Valley two years ago conceived the idea for Antipasti.
Working in a restaurant is nothing new for the brothers, who have been in the business for 30 years, starting as youngsters at their mother”™s and uncles”™ knees in pizzerias in the Bronx and Westchester County. They were thrown into the business following the death of their father. Their mom needed money to raise her young family, so she turned to her brothers. The uncles took the boys under their wings, making sure they learned everything from the bottom up. Mazzotta remembers peeling potatoes at the age of six.
From there it was dishwasher, busboy, waiter, bartender, pizza maker, line cook and cashier. They graduated from the pizzerias to delicatessens to high volume pizzeria-restaurants, a casual family Italian restaurant, and high-volume catering facilities to hotels.
It was only natural that their lifelong love of Italian cuisine would nurture an entrepreneurial spirit that in 1993, established Amore Pizza in Scarsdale. Within two years, Mazzotta said, it became a multimillion-dollar pizzeria. Five years later, they upped the ante and opened a family style dining restaurant in Armonk, called Amore Pizzeria and Pasta. In 2003, they went to Greenwich and opened Pomodoro Pizzeria and Trattoria. “It”™s an Italian bistro that”™s a little more sophisticated; targeting the affluent community.”
Two years later, they opened Amore Pizzeria in Thornwood. They sold the Scarsdale location shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. With the latest endeavor, the brothers now oversee more than 100 full- and part-time employees,
It was during that trip to Napa that the brothers wanted to do something different. They wanted to present Italian food in a creative and innovative way, Mazzotta said. They knew more people were drinking wine. An antipasti bar was “the nuts and bolts” of Italian tradition. A communal table with a variety of foods. “It”™s a celebration of life.”
The elements were there: pizza bar, wine bar and antipasti bar. Mazzotta wrote things down and talked with his brother; a Milan-Soho feel … nothing stereotypical ”¦ integrate old world elements with the new. A rendering started to emerge. “We needed to find an architect who felt what we were feeling.” Then it was to find the right space. Mazzotta heard that the North Broadway site would be available in August 2006. By December they struck a deal. They fine tuned their design and in May of last year the renovations began.
“It was fun to see it come alive.”
They realized that as much as they enjoyed working in the kitchen, they knew they couldn”™t be the chefs for this new restaurant. They looked for someone who could share their vision. They found him in top chef Rick Laakkonen, a Culinary Institute of America graduate who worked in Europe and Manhattan hotspots. “He was the cherry on the top,” Mazzotta said.
All summer, the three experimented with meals in the kitchens of the other restaurants. For a week in November they held a private opening. “The energy is building,” Laakkonen said.
Mazzotta said as the renaissance of downtown White Plains continues, it can only mean good things for the restaurant.
