Mm.

It was the place to be in the '20s and '30s, and everybody would go to Gargiulo's.

Things, you know, neighborhoods change, the city change, and things like that, so Coney Island wasn't like it used to be, a little bit of a downturn, and the Gargiulo family was looking to move on, and that's when my family, the Russo family, bought the restaurant in 1965.

Now, in the beginning, it was my un- my great uncles', and times were a little, you know, tough then.

You'd come home at the end of the week with a couple hundred dollars, and that was it.

But they stuck with it, and then in 1977, we got three stars from The New York Times, which, at that point in time, it was unheard of for a restaurant outside of Manhattan to get that kind of recognition.

And Mimi Sheraton, she wrote the review, and she just said, "What Gargiulo's sets out, they ac- accomplish so well." And that was just home, you know, style cooking, and family feel, that type of food, and that type of atmosphere.

And, and were you going to finance school and then interning at The Chew?

tell me about mike the bake i hear about him all the time from everything i listen to but i want to know more about him and more than just what he taught you

yeah mike the bake he was the pastry chef in the restaurant for over 40 years and he was a cousin of ours and he came over from italy and that was back you know at the time we had just purchased the restaurant in 1965 and And kind of, you know, everybody in the kitchen was all family.

So he came straight from Italy and, you know, was just the most incredible, talented man ever.

He could bake anything like nobody's business.

And then he'd hop on the line and he could cook any dish as well as anyone, if not the best.

So.

He was just so incredible and so instrumental in kind of taking me from that young kid to kind of where I am now.

Tell me, how did you get into the whole TV appearances, that whole world? It's always interesting to see how, you know, a chef that's in a family business goes from doing their thing day in, day out, and then all of a sudden, next thing you know, they're on, you know, Good Morning America or CBS or whatever it is.

So that's a signature dish of the restaurant, so tell us about that.

Yeah, so in, in 1983, when we added the catering hall on, you know, we were accustomed to cooking for the dining room, which was, you know, about 120 people, maybe some small parties here or there.

But now we were all of a sudden really cooking for the masses, hundreds of people-

Okay

... we've done it over, over h- so many years.

I mean, maybe there's been minor tweaks or changes, plated different, things like that.

But the core of everything has stayed the same, and I think that's part of, you know, the longevity that we have, is because we stick to those things.

I was writing it down because she had none of it written down.

There are, I have a lot of them, not all of them.

You know, it's funny if I look back at like the pastira, let's just say, and that, you know, he taught me, you know, over the course of a, let's say, four year time period, the cannoli and everything we were doing weekly.

Right.

So that just became second kind of nature.

But pastira you make once a year.

So I look back at some of the recipes that I wrote down.

Where did that come from that you always say that? Did your grandpa used to say that?

So what were you doing when you first joined the restaurant?

Yeah.

So, you know, I had worked part-time the summers I was home from college here and there.

And when I first started I got to learn really from all of my uncles and my aunt.

And each one of them kind of has their own area of expertise in the restaurant.

So like my uncle Louie, he is in charge of the accounting and the finance and things like that.

So coming out fresh out of school with a degree in those sorts of things, I was helping him out a little.

Right.