A woman took Joseph Merlino's hand and towed him across the marble floor to her friends, who fussed over him, cooing.
"The
veal parmiagana! Fabulous!" somebody else told the maitre d' of the hot
new Italian restaurant in South Florida that bears the family name. He
had stopped to ask how they liked everything. "Loved the cheesecake," a
woman said. "Is that your mother's recipe?"
And so it went on a
drizzly Friday night in the land of perpetual valet parking as the
reputed former boss of the Philadelphia mob darted around the room,
greeting diners. Merlino hugged. He kissed. He shook hands, laying his
hand on a shoulder, leaning in close to talk. It went on hour after
hour.
The
restaurant opened this month, built around recipes his mother, Rita,
cooked when the man known as "Skinny Joey," now 52, was growing up in
Point Breeze.
Would Merlino be willing to share one of them, perhaps for his favorite, crab gravy?
"I went to jail for not telling," he quipped. "I'm not giving up a recipe. I'm not telling."
Merlino
may soon be heading back. U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick last
week ordered him to report to federal prison Jan. 5 to begin serving a
four-month sentence for violating terms of his supervised release after
serving time on a 2001 racketeering conviction.
In October, the
judge ruled Merlino had violated those terms in June when he hung out
with a member of the Philadelphia crime family, John "Johnny Chang"
Ciancaglini, at Havana Nights, a Boca Raton cigar bar and lounge. An FBI
surveillance team saw Merlino, Ciancaglini, and two other felons in the
glass-enclosed VIP section filled with leather recliners and a
wall-size TV, according to testimony in the case.
Merlino's lawyers say it was a chance encounter, not a planned meeting, and they have appealed Surrick's ruling.
But Friday night in Boca, jail time seemed far away,
"You want a table? I'm the right guy, then; I'm the maitre d," Merlino said Friday. "Hey, get these two a table."
The
white-tablecloth restaurant was jammed, and a steady stream of
Mercedeses, BMWs, and Audis pulled up to Merlino's valet station on SE
1st Avenue. The valets parked a white Ferrari right in front. As the
evening wore on and the nearby nightclubs started cranking up, the crowd
got younger, and the sound track changed from Sinatra standards to
"Dancing Queen" by ABBA and the Bee Gees' "More Than a Woman" and
"Stayin' Alive."
Merlino has survived about a dozen attempts on
his life. And in the same 2001 case that sent him to prison, Merlino
also stood charged with more than half a dozen shootings, including
those of a video-poker operator who refused to pay street tax, a rival
mob leader, and the brother of a witness in an earlier mob trial.
But the mobster denied the allegations, and jurors acquitted him of those counts.
Merlino
publicly swore off the thug life and moved to a gated housing
development off Broken Sound Road here three years ago after he was
released from federal custody.
"Boca's beautiful," he said Friday. "I love the warm weather."
The
menu is from back home, however. Patrons were enjoying entrees like
veal South Philly ($32), sauteed in brown gravy with sausage, mushrooms,
hot and sweet peppers, and garlic. The aforementioned linguine crab
gravy ($24) - blue crab, sauteed onions, basil, parsley, and fresh
tomato sauce.
And then there were the drinks, such as the $14
"South Philly Beet Down," a mixture of London Dry No. 3 gin, beet juice,
ginger, and lemon; and the $14 "Spring Garden," with Tito's, St.
Germain, meyer lemon, lychee puree, and micro flowers. Patrons also
quaffed "Passyunk Avenue Nitros," various concoctions infused with a
cryogenic liquid that is minus-320 degrees Fahrenheit.
"I was
looking for a little taste of home," said Janice Rubenstein, a native of
Gladwyne who has lived in South Florida for two decades and who had
heard the buzz about Merlino's. "I love South Philly. Everybody loves
Italian, right?" She said the food reminded her of Ralph's and the Villa
d' Roma.
Merlino is not an owner of the restaurant, said John
Wyner, general manager and a partner in the venture. Most recently,
Wyner ran the top Boca steak house, Abe & Louie's, and he has
experience in Atlantic City hospitality.
Multimillionaire Florida
businessman Stanley Stein is the major investor in Merlino's. A South
Philly native, Stein also paid for a private jet to ferry Merlino to and
from federal court and put him up at the Four Seasons in Center City.
"My
friend Stan Stein ate at my mom's house many times and he said he
wanted to do a restaurant with her recipes and me as maitre d'," Merlino
said.
Rita Merlino until recently was in Boca, coaching the
kitchen staff on the intricacies of her dishes. "She loves the kitchen,"
he said. "She's always cooking for people. The holidays would come and
we always had people eating over. Neighbors, people who didn't have any
place to go, everybody. It was a full house."
Famous for his sense
of fashion, Merlino was wearing a Prada leather jacket the color of
cured tobacco over a Versace V-neck black cashmere sweater, black Armani
pants (skinny jeans, actually) and a Louis Vuitton belt. He also wore
shoes by French designer Christian Louboutin, the popular black ones
with the red soles.
In front of the restaurant, Merlino posed for a photographer in the mist, as wind rustled the palm trees.
"C'mon, I'm . . . freezing," he said.
http://articles.philly.com/2014-11-23/news/56459742_1_joseph-merlino-joey-merlino-john-johnny-chang-ciancaglini