In the wake of Baltimore City extending its stay-home order last week, Sergio Vitale, chef-owner of Aldo’s Ristorante Italiano on High Street, has led a coalition of Little Italy spots hoping to close down one of the neighborhood’s main streets to allow for open-air seating so that customers can enjoy curbside fare en plein air.

Vitale was hoping the city government would support the efforts, but says that a private phone conversation with Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young did not go the way he’d hoped.

“I’ve never wanted to make this about me,” Vitale says, “But it fell to me to become the voice of a movement that’s growing in Baltimore City. This mayor’s response was, ‘If you try operate, we will shut you down.’ He said he would pull our food permit from the health department and shut us down. And I took that to mean permanently. I don’t want to make it about him, but he happens to be the decision maker in this right now—he and the governor. We need a lifeline here. All we’re asking for is an opportunity to earn a living.”

At press time, the mayor’s office couldn’t be reached for comment.

Tell me about your idea to have an outdoor food court in Little Italy.
The ideas are not original—we are just trying to do what other places have done. I’ve tried to pitch this “curbside-plus,” as I call it, sort of an outdoor food court idea. All the curbside rules are in place, you’d order the same as you order now, but you’d be able to eat like at Herald Square in New York. We’d bleach the tables in between and come up with the protocol. I was hoping this call to the mayor could have followed up with a meeting where we establish a protocol together with stakeholders, public policymakers, restaurateurs, and small businesses to talk next steps, but he dismissed the opportunity.

We are 10 weeks into restaurants and bars being closed for dining in by Governor Larry Hogan. Why did you come up with this plan now?
All the cuts that could have been made have been made. What else are we do to? Curbside is working for about half the restaurants in my anecdotal experience, but for the other half, it’s a slow way to lose money. They talk about next steps, and 25 percent occupancy is a fast way to lose a lot of money. We need 50 percent, and no one is really comfortable with that yet.

“Curbside is working for about half the restaurants in my anecdotal experience, but for the other half, it’s a slow way to lose money.” —Sergio Vitale

Why is 25 percent occupancy problematic?
With 25 percent occupancy, you’re at a different level of service. There’s more cost involved than just the curbside model. I have to zone air conditioning for that. I have to bring in staff. We have to assume liability. No one is talking about the potential of civil liability if someone were to, god forbid, contract COVID and blame you for it. I’m not sure how you’d prove it, but that’s a potential liability. And then rent is a tough thing. This is a sad and tiresome cliché, but this is unprecedented and we’re going to have to come up with new ways to do it.

Why the opposition?
He’s making a public health argument. He says, ‘What if we have outdoor dining and someone coughs?’ Well, why is the restaurant industry being held to a different standard? The city is encouraging people to go out on bike lanes and closing streets to exercise, so if the measure is someone coughs within 50 feet of you, we will never move forward. And people have to assess their own risk, we are not forcing this on anyone.

I closed my restaurant the day before the governor mandated it. I check four of the five boxes for high risk on COVID, so I take it seriously. My father is 75, he checks five of the five boxes. We don’t want to put anyone at risk, our staff or our guests, but we are trying to thread this needle to move forward and this is just a baby step. I’m now so concerned because what should have been an easy opportunity to work together has been so thoroughly rejected. I’m worried about the whole restaurant industry in the city now.

What is the workaround if the mayor is trying to shut you down?
We want him to publicly commit that if the governor further eases restrictions, he will retroactively follow suit. In Little Italy, we were in the position of wanting to take this matter in our own hands, at our own risk. We were going to shut down the street ourselves, put tables in the streets, serve invited guests, and invite the media to show what it would look like. I invited the mayor to come to that to announce a revision to his policy and use that opportunity and he yelled at me and said that he would shut us down, fine us, open the streets, and pull the health permit from the health department. I can’t ask any of my colleagues to risk their entire businesses just to make a point, so we are going to rachet up the pressure and continue the good fight.

It has been suggested that we reconvene with a group of experts so we can give the mayor a proposal. I don’t see why we have to do that—other cities have done the yeoman’s work on this. If he wants a benchmark, there are a 1,000 of them out there. I ended my acrimonious phone call with the mayor by saying, ‘Let’s not end on a sour note. Thanks for taking my call and let’s keep the lines of communication open.’ That’s still my position. At the end of the day, it’s not about either of us, it’s about the industry and the whole city.

“I’m now so concerned because what should have been an easy opportunity to work together has been so thoroughly rejected. I’m worried about the whole restaurant industry in the city now.” —Sergio Vitale

When did this all come about?
All of us have been trying to think about what next steps would look like for a number of weeks now and last week was a turning point in curbside. I hadn’t spoken with anyone who was open who didn’t see a downturn in their curbside business last week. I think the governor’s order [to reopen the beaches and boardwalks] was a wet kiss to Ocean City. People with two months cabin fever wanted to get out of the house and if they were allowed to do it legally, they were going to go down there. I think that was the impetus behind the downturn in Baltimore City last week. It just became more relevant. These programs that the government has created like PPP [Paycheck Protection Program] are not applicable for restaurants that easily. The state has been slow to give the grants. It became inevitable that if we didn’t start to raise our voices now, there would be nothing left to save in a few weeks.

How is carryout going for you?
My experience is the same as many others. It started off pretty strong. We love and appreciate the support. One of the things you find out at this time is who your friends are. It’s just amazing at this time to see the people coming out. It’s really humbling, but it’s not a sustainable model. Last week, we had our worst week with curbside. We rebounded on Saturday and Sunday a little bit. But from Monday until Saturday, we did about $4,000 in sales total. I heard from other restaurants last Tuesday that they did $90 on curbside.

But some of the restaurateurs are doing really well. At one point I was looking at our revenue and we were doing 25 percent of our normal volume with curbside. One of the things that allows us to operate curbside are the generous gratuities of the people picking up, which is amazing. Talk about stepping up—if the mayor and political class would step up in the way that the general public has, it would be an amazing thing. Instead, we have this contempt and adversarial relationship, which is disappointing.

Every day I talk to Alex Smith of Atlas Restaurant Group, I talk to Patrick Russell at Kooper’s in Fells Point, Jim Kinney at The Capital Grille, Chad Gauss at The Food Market, and Elan Kotz at Orto, who used to work for me. We have formed a coalition to try to move forward. I will tell you, it’s difficult for an Italian guy like me to be restrained, but we have to do something here to move forward. I feel compelled to speak out at this point.

“Despite the devastation to our industry, as rents reset, there will be another opportunity for a renaissance that we’ve seen in Baltimore recently—sort of small chef-driven funky and fun and often ethnic concepts, which is what makes a city exciting.” —Sergio Vitale

What will the culinary landscape look like when this is all over?
It’s a mixed bag. Sadly, I think 50 percent of restaurants will not reopen. You’ll have to make a reinvestment to open fully for indoor dining, that’s tens of thousands of dollars in training and supplies. If you don’t close permanently before that happens, you might find yourself in a position to have to close permanently after. Having said that, despite the devastation to our industry, as rents reset, there will be another opportunity for a renaissance that we’ve seen in Baltimore recently—sort of small chef-driven funky and fun and often ethnic concepts, which is what makes a city exciting. That would be a positive outcome of this.

Why do you think there will be more chef-driven spots?
Big chains will probably dominate the landscape for a while, but when there’s a correction in the rental market, no one will charge the rents they did before. People are going to start to see opportunity for small, 500-square foot to 1,000 square-foot models, maybe delivery and curbside-oriented. My sense is that these are how these things percolate up. Fine dining is a particularly challenging area because of concerns about the spread of COVID indoors, but the whole model has been under assault for years with razor thin margins and this only exacerbates the underlying problems. After the initial shock, how the restaurant business will re-engage is small, less expensive to open models.

Will restaurants survive?
It’s a human need to want to break bread in the company of others. That’s the reality. This is what we do. Those of us who were foolish enough to get into this business before will be foolish enough to get into it again. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of devastation in between.

Would you pursue this career path again?
When people ask about the restaurant business, I often say the good days are great and the bad days are horrible. On average, it’s a really fun thing. I’ve eaten better than medieval kings. I’ve been in the company of some amazing people who’ve bettered society and are captains of industry. I’m afforded the opportunity to have these experiences because of the restaurant business. And then all the staff that has worked with us. I love the business, it’s a good way to use my highly unemployable political science degree from Loyola. If I had to do it all over again, I would.

“It’s a human need to want to break bread in the company of others. That’s the reality. This is what we do. Those of us who were foolish enough to get into this business before will be foolish enough to get into it again.” —Sergio Vitale

You’ve definitely been a crusader for the city, where does that come from?
Mom was a fighter and both of my parents have a deeply imbued contempt for any sense of injustice. I think I probably picked up a little bit of that. I know it’s tough the inequities right now, and you have to balance that with public health concerns, but picking winners and losers by the government is not a just thing. I think I probably got the fighting spirit from mom. She fought small cell lung cancer for 14 months. That’s a terminal diagnosis from the beginning and she fought it to the end. It’s hard not to witness something like that and be inspired.

Why do restaurants matter?
Why do you go to a city except to dine well and to have an opportunity to see some culture in the company of like-minded people? Isn’t it an ancient Greek who said “all good things of this earth flow into the city?” Restaurants are the tip of the spear.

With handmade signs, carnations, and candy in tow, a group of Southeast Baltimore small business owners are taking to the medians of President Street this week to wave and give out goodies to morning commuters coming into the city.

Among them Tuesday morning was a smiling Nick Johnson, owner of furniture store Su Casa in Fells Point, who stood alongside Sergio Vitale of Aldo’s, Patrick Russell of Kooper’s Tavern, Beth Hawks of Zelda Zen, Max’s Taphouse owners Ron and Gail Furman—who gave away wooden tokens redeemable for free beer at their bar—and others proudly holding signs with slogans such as “You are Our Valentine” and “Small Businesses Welcome You.”

“For me the fun part is I’ve met a bunch of my customers in traffic,” Johnson says. “It’s nice to put a smile on their faces. That was the whole intent. Some people are like, ‘Isn’t there a larger message? Is this a political thing?’ And the answer is no, this is about smiles and waves, and that’s it.”

The mission behind the gathering at one of the city’s most prominent entryways at the bottom of I-83—a location often frequented by squeegee kids, people who are experiencing homelessness, and organizations collecting donations—is part of a larger small business initiative called “Love Local Bmore” spearheaded by councilmembers Zeke Cohen and Bill Henry.

“We’ve heard from far too many people in surrounding counties that they don’t come to Baltimore anymore,” says Vitale of Aldo’s, mentioning negative perceptions of the city based on media coverage of the crime rate. “All of those stories deserve a lot of attention, but at the same time a lot of us here in the city are doing great things, and we have employees who depend on people visiting. So we wanted to counter that narrative with love, positivity, and a little generosity.”

Gathering on President Street is seen by many as the first action plan in moving the Love Local Bmore project forward. Johnson, a Fells Point Main Street board member, says that the idea was a result of him and his neighbors collectively “feeling the impact of fewer people downtown.”

“One of the things we noticed is how conditioned we’ve become to trying to ignore people in the street,” Vitale adds. “It seems like everyone has blinders on, but once we broke through that and people realized we weren’t asking for anything, just giving things away, most of them were super positive. It was sort of a pep rally for small businesses in a lot of ways.”

The owners plan to continue their presence during the morning commute throughout the rest of the week leading up to Valentine’s Day. Vitale even hints that there could be additional free sweets, including cookies made by bakers in Little Italy.

Johnson says that the hope is for this to inspire other business owners in different areas of the city to start similar projects, or even join in on President Street. (Anna Leventis, owner of SoBo Cafe in Federal Hill, was among those waving on Tuesday morning.)

As Vitale puts it: “When you lead with love, all other things fall into place.”

“I had such a blast, all of us did,” he adds. “Gail Furman told me, ‘You’re going to be reinvigorated by this. You’re going to go back to your business and feel super pumped and charged to be in Baltimore.’ She was 100 percent right.”

ROBBIN HAAS

Chef/owner, Birroteca, The Nickel Taphouse

The Brewer’s Art: The Baltimore Spring Water, its version of a gin and tonic.

The Food Market: Its lobster mac and cheese.

Tapas Teatro: The baby octopus and potatoes.

Pho Dat Thanh, Towson: Pho.

Zorba’s Bar & Grill: The lamb chops.

BINDA SINGH

Co-owner, Ambassador Dining Room

The Food Market: The scallops are amazing.

French Kitchen at Lord Baltimore Hotel: The vibrant beet salad.

Atwater’s: I’m guaranteed to find something I like.

Stone Mill Bakery: The delicious tuna salad.

Cinghiale: The best hand-made pasta in town.

SERGIO VITALE

Chef/co-owner, Chazz: A Bronx Original, Aldo’s Ristorante Italiano

The Food Market: Buffalo pickles—and everything else.

The Capital Grille: Marconi’s salad.

Shoo-Fly Diner: The “adult” slushies. (The apple-cider is dangerously good.)

Broadway Diner: The patty melts.

Andy Nelson’s Southern Pit Barbecue: The pulled pork.

BRIGITTE BLEDSOE

Corporate executive chef, Miss Shirley’s Cafe

Hamilton Tavern: Best burger, hands down.

Thames Street Oyster House: The raw bar, lobster roll.

Fusion: A great, unknown sushi spot in Cockeysville.

Christopher Daniel: The appetizers and EJ, the best bartender/server.

Pappas Restaurant: The crab cake, Old Bay wings.

CHRIS BECKER

Chief operations officer/executive chef, Bagby Restaurant group

Linwoods: Chef Jay Rohlfing’s cooking.

Maggie’s Farm: Fried-oyster steam buns, whiskey lemonades.

Joung Kak: Kimchee soup.

Thames Street Oyster House: The lobster roll.

W.C. Harlan: Late-night drinks.

KARIN AND BUD TIFFANY

Co-owners, Peter’s Inn

Cinghiale: For its consistency.

Poncabird Pub: Old-school, banging, crazy view.

The Food Market: Great brunch, luscious libations.

Hersh’s Pizza & Drinks: Its clever menu.

Tortilleria Sinaloa: Huevos con carne.

Like its creator, the veal meatball at Chazz: A Bronx Original is
Italian at its core, yet brilliantly unique in its construction. Its
presence, similar to Sergio Vitale’s, looms large over the Harbor East
restaurant from which this local chef appears poised to become the next
big thing on the national food scene. Restaurateur and appetizer share
other traits. Both are burly, sweet, and, in Baltimore, beloved. “We
knew we wanted to do a meatball,” the 6-foot-3 Vitale says. “I also knew
that I didn’t want to do it on top of pasta. It’s not the way it’s
served in Italy. It’s a bastardization and a line I wasn’t willing to
cross. I thought we’d do veal, pork, and beef. The first chefs we worked
with prepped the meatball according to my recipe, but there was some
miscommunication and they used 100 percent veal. I tasted it, and I
went, ‘That’s pretty good.’

“To give it a little extra oomph, I created that sausage gravy that
it sits in so it would have more texture and flavor. There’s a little
soy sauce in [the meatball]. Within a month or two, people were
talking.”

With their mouths full. Vitale, 35, has been feeding Baltimore diners
virtually his entire life. At his father Aldo’s original namesake
restaurant in Fallston, he stood on a milk crate to work the register
while his older brother, Alessandro, made pizzas under papa’s watchful
eye. Later, they’d come to understand their strengths and passions and
would reverse roles.

The family’s Little Italy restaurant, Aldo’s Ristorante Italiano,
grandiose in its flavor and ambition, opened in 1998, and wowed critics.
It also elevated the neighborhood’s culinary landscape—which is exactly
what Sergio is doing to the pizza world at Chazz.

“You talk to Sergio and everything has to be perfect,” says Chazz
Palminteri, who partnered with the Vitale brothers on the Bronx-style
pizza place. “He’s just so smart. Every time we go to another restaurant
and I say, ‘Hey, Serge, this is pretty good,’ we both order it, and he
says, ‘I know how they did this. I’m gonna try it.’ He makes it for me,
and he makes it better than we had.

“It’s like being a great actor or a great writer,” says Palminteri,
who’s undeniably both. “There are certain people that are just gifted,
you know?”

Behind the pizza bar at Chazz, Vitale’s making a red clam pie. The
truffle slicer, which he favors to ensure his staff cuts the garlic
paper-thin, has just broken, so he grabs a knife and chops it with the
speed and precision of a race-car driver taking a turn. He slides the
pizza into Chazz’s 900-degree coal-fired oven, and, 90 seconds later,
it’s ready.

He offers it to a guest, who takes a slice.

“Just one? Obviously, you’re not Italian,” he says, breaking into a deep laugh that bellows throughout the dining room.

Spend even a few minutes with him and part of you will wish you were
because Sergio Vitale makes it seem so damn fun to be Italiano.

The Vitale family table in Glen Arm, where Sergio grew up, was always crowded with food and wine, people and personalities.

“It’s something that’s part and parcel in an Italian household,”
Sergio says. “Whether you’re rich or poor, in good times or bad,
Italians always eat well. It’s so much a part of the culture.”

Aldo immigrated to the U.S. from Italy in 1961. Sergio was born in
Baltimore and learned to speak Italian at home, where the family had
what he describes as a “European relationship” with animals.

“Around Easter, we’d have lamb or goat that my father picked up from a
local farmer,” he says. “He’s grazing out back, we’re feeding him. I
remember the weekend before Easter, my mom would take us shopping, and
my uncle would come over, who was a butcher. When I left, it was alive;
when we got back, there were fillets.”

Young Sergio once got pet rabbits, but the relationship eventually soured. After one of them scratched him, his uncle showed up.

“We had delicious pappardelle alla lepre,” he says, chuckling. “We
got the biggest kick from having animals around, but invariably these
animals were eventually eaten.”

Sergio’s initial interest in the kitchen tended toward sweets, although his first batch of cookies left something to be desired.
“He
was so proud to make these cookies for my dad,” Alessandro recalls.
“But he used salt instead of sugar. We all ate them like they were the
greatest thing, even though they tasted like crap.”

A later effort at tiramisu yielded decidedly different results.

“The owner of Sabatino’s used to come in on his night off,” Sergio
says. “I made tiramisu one night, and he tried it and loved it. He goes,
‘I’d love for us to have this at the restaurant.’ I’m 14 at the time,
and I said, ‘I’m trying to do a business with this.’ I remember him
taking out a $100 bill and handing it to me and saying, ‘Buy the
ingredients you need, I want some of this made for my restaurant.’”

From that beginning grew La Pasticceria Aldo, the family’s wholesale
bakery that prepared and distributed desserts to customers along the
East Coast.

Still, when Sergio entered Loyola College, he majored in political
science. In 1995, Peter Lorenzi was appointed dean of its business
school.

“The first note I got, before I even got on campus, was from Sergio,
on the letterhead of the Italian Student Association, welcoming me,” he
says.

Though Lorenzi never taught Sergio, the two struck up a friendship that remains intact today.

“I have him come speak to my honors class about entrepreneurship to
inspire business students,” Lorenzi says. “He’s very bright, very
articulate. He’s not just some sort of a slap-you-on-the-back
good-old-boy. He’s got a good grasp of politics, medicine, all sorts of
different things.”
Sergio was younger than some of the students he
now talks to when he and Alessandro teamed up with their parents to open
Aldo’s in Little Italy. (The family sold the Fallston restaurant in
1992.)

“I was a senior in college, president of the student government, and
opening a restaurant at the same time,” he says. “I slept once every
three days.”

The restaurant’s Roman-style décor and ambiance are due in large part
to Sergio. He dedicated himself to learning every aspect of the
business to the point where, a year after Aldo’s opened, he was writing
columns for the American Institute of Wine and Food.
He also was busy nudging his father out the door.

“My father came in with the school of thought that he had to do
everything himself,” Sergio says. “My brother and I were not in this
[business] only to do one restaurant. We decided it was not sustainable
if it depended on one person. So we quietly fired my father from the
kitchen. We said, ‘You need to take a few days off every week so we can
develop new talent.’”
Ah, the joys of a family business.

“It’s an odd family in the sense that, above all, we appreciate
brutal honesty,” Sergio says. “We’re very Baltimore in that we disdain
pretension. We don’t put up with bullshit, so we don’t sugarcoat things
when we talk.”

Aldo, who’s semi-retired now, spends his days with a grandson and consulting with his sons on the restaurants.
“He
has a good palate and good mind for the food business,” Aldo says. “I’m
never satisfied until I get things perfect, and that’s exactly the way
he is.”

Chazz Palminteri was lost in Little Italy’s maze of chicken parm- and
beef tortellini-filled menus when he was in town in 2009 performing his
one-man show, A Bronx Tale.

“I went into a couple of places and I wasn’t too pleased, and then
someone said go to Aldo’s,” he says. “The food was exquisite. I started
eating there every night.”

From those visits, a friendship and business partnership was born.

“[Sergio’s] an undiscovered talent,” says Palminteri, who was 41 when
the film A Bronx Tale catapulted him to stardom. “He’s like Bobby Flay,
Wolfgang Puck. He’s just not known yet.”

The Vitale brothers had been working on a more casual dining concept,
and the marriage of their expertise to Palminteri’s Bronx persona was
ideal.
“Chazz had always wanted to be in the restaurant business,”
Sergio says. “We talked about this deal in his penthouse hotel room in
Atlantic City. We wrote down the basic structure of what the deal would
look like on the back of a cocktail napkin.”

In mid-June, one year and 50,000 pizzas after Chazz opened, Sergio
and Alessandro are mingling in the dining room with a group of
monied-looking men. They’ve just finished a two-hour meeting exploring
funding for expanding the Chazz brand. Las Vegas and New York are
possibilities.
Sergio is the only one not wearing a suit. His black
clogs, dark jeans, black chef’s coat, and black beard suit him much
better. Alessandro runs the financial side, while Sergio is in charge of
staffing, training, the menu, food, and presentation.

In many ways, he’s consumed by the job. He lives above Aldo’s and
bounces between the restaurants five or six times a day. There’s not
much time for a social life.

“I have three girlfriends,” he jokes. “Aldo’s, Chazz, and my mother.”

Sergio claims to be a bit of a misanthrope, yet his manner with
everyone he encounters—from his dishwashers to famous
customers—demonstrates an instinctive understanding of human nature.

“I talk to the staff about always keeping in mind that the word
restaurant shares the same root as restorative,” he says. “After people
have spent time with us, they ought to leave happier, a little restored
in spirit. We’re nourishing more than just their stomachs.”

Right now, he’s feeding his own. He’s discussing shedding the 30
pounds he gained leading up to the restaurant’s opening, when a waitress
delivers an order of clams casino.

“I had some last week, and I thought they were too soggy on top,” he
says. “We have an oven that uses three types of heat. I thought two were
out of balance with the third, so I made a little adjustment.

“These are crisper,” he says, his smile disappearing just long enough to chew. “The perils of the job.”

Not even the vaunted meatball escapes examination. Last week, he tweaked it to reduce its sweetness.

Minutes before the dinner rush begins, he makes his way to the
kitchen, where he grabs a fistful of spoons to sample four sauces and a
soup.
What’s he tasting for?

“Perfection,” he says, “and nothing less.”