Just Asking...Richard D'Amico

Years ago, Tom Waits sang “no one brings anything small into a bar around here,” about the formerly notorious corner of Ninth and Hennepin, now the site of Ralph Burnet’s Chambers Hotel. Richard D’Amico is hoping Waits’ lyric still resonates, as his newest Italian restaurant, D’Amico Kitchen, attempts to fill the void of two vanished icons of Minneapolis success—one recent (Chambers Kitchen, star chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s collaboration with Burnet) and one of 22 years (D’Amico Cucina, the D’Amico family’s flagship restaurant, which closed June 27).

For more than a year now, Richard D’Amico has actually been staying in Burnet’s boutique hotel when he’s in town, after selling his house in Kenwood. “We spend about 75 percent of our time down in Naples, [Florida],” he says. The restaurant deal came together shortly before Richard and his brother Larry closed Cucina in June. “Ralph and I met in the lobby,” Richard says, “and we got to talking.” They’ve since moved the main dining area, given the room a purple hue, bought new gold-leafed chairs, and, for the comfort of diners, rearranged Burnet’s famously controversial art collection.

Isn’t “cucina” Italian for “kitchen”?
Yeah, but [the new restaurant] will be nowhere near Cucina. It will mostly be half the price.

So is fine dining really dead?
(Nods.) Unless you’re in London, Paris, New York, Tokyo. It’s almost dead in L.A.

Is “fine dining” defined only by price point? After all, your new restaurant looks incredible, and you still have former D’Amico Cucina chef John Occhiato in the kitchen.
D’Amico Kitchen is just a simpler style of food. It’s more southern Italian than northern. Cucina was pretty much northern Italian.

But Occhiato was borrowing techniques from all over and even dabbling in molecular gastronomy.
Yes, he was doing sous vide [vacuum cooking].

Are you taking his sous vide machine away? No, he has it. Actually, he’s working on using the sous vide machine for pasta dishes so we can have hot food for overnight dining.

So how do you feel about the way things ended at Cucina?
Twenty-two years is a long time. It was sad. One thing I’m proud of is the way we closed. A lot of places come in and have a meeting with employees and are like, “Oh, by the way, we’re closing tomorrow. Today’s your last day.”

How do you measure success in the restaurant business?
Day by day.

That’s a very Tom Kelly answer. What does that mean?
Most restaurants don’t make it two years. Okay—there’s critical success, there’s personal success, and there’s financial success. If you can get all three, then you’ve got something. I mean, some people think cuisine is an art form—and in a way it is—but it’s not the same as being a painter and making a living off what you paint. Usually, painters are successful after they die.

You’re right. Van Gogh was eating paint when he was alive.
Yes, it took them forever to figure out how good he was. But to succeed in the restaurant business you first have to make yourself happy and feel like you’ve succeeded at executing what you wanted to do in the first place. Otherwise you’re done right there. The next thing is having your customers like it. Somewhere, very close to there, is having the food community—meaning foodies at large, not just the critics—like what you’re doing and appreciate it. If you do all those things right, and you have the right setting and service, you should be a success financially.

Do you measure yourself against Phil Roberts and Parasole?
No, not at all.

But if you think about high-end local restaurants in the last 20 years, it’s largely you and Phil.
We’re not pumping out . . . you know, how many Oceanaires did they have at one time? 10 or 11? We headed down that road in the mid ’90s, and when we found out what that world was like, we stopped. It’s not who we are.

So who are you?
We want to open one-of-a-kinds. We’re not going to open another D’Amico Kitchen.

But didn’t the catering operation help sustain Occhiato’s art at Cucina?
We were feeding the beast for years. And you can only feed the beast for so long before it prevents you from doing something fresh.

Anyway, great time to open up a restaurant.
We have faith in America. And there are better deals now than there will be during the recovery.

I haven’t heard of a legendary Richard D’Amico temper tantrum lately. Has Florida mellowed you out? Why aren’t you still throwing chairs around?
They’re too expensive! Yeah, Florida has helped—the sun’s out everyday. And I bought a sailboat.

5 things you didn’t know about Richard D’Amico
1. His grandmother spoke Italian but swore in English.
2 His father and grandfather worked in a coal mine in West Virginia.
3. He still has season tickets to the Timberwolves, but he splits them since the team got rid of Kevin Garnett.
4. The purple Mona Lisa by the Chambers entrance is his, not Ralph Burnet’s.
5. He’ll never open a sports bar again.